Quotes About Beauty

The multiplicity of forms! The hummingbird, the fox, the raven, the sparrow hawk, the otter, the dragonfly, the water lily! And on and on. It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day.

And someone's face, whom you love, will be as a star both intimate and ultimate, and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful. And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper: oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two beautiful bodies of your lungs.

And this is what I learned: that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness—the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books—can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.

I walk in the world to love it.

And who do you think you are sauntering along five feet up in the air, the ocean a blue fire around your ankles, the sun on your face on your shoulders its golden mouth whispering (so it seems) you! you! you!

And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you finally figured out what beauty is for? And have you changed your life?

A poem should always have birds in it.

Wild sings the bird of the heart in the forests of our lives.

When I woke the morning light was just slipping in front of the stars and I was covered with blossoms.

I woke And crept Like a cat On silent feet About my own house- To look At you While you were sleeping, Your hair Sprayed on the pillow, Your eyes Closed, Your body Safe and solitary, And my doors Shut for your safety And your comfort. I did this Thinking I was intruding Yet wanting to see The most beautiful thing That has ever been in my house.

Over and over in the butterfly we see the idea of transcendence. In the forest we see not the inert but the aspiring. In water that departs forever and forever returns, we experience eternity.

Starlings in Winter I feel my boots trying to leave the ground, I feel my heart pumping hard. I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.

Understand from the first this certainty. Butterflies don't write books, neither do lilies or violets. Which doesn't mean they don't know, in their own way, what they are. That they don't know they are alive—that they don't feel, that action upon which all consciousness sits, lightly or heavily. Humility is the prize of the leaf-world. Vainglory is the bane of us, the humans.

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!      What a task          to ask of anything, or anyone, yet it is ours,     and not by the century or the year, but by the hours. One

Does the hummingbird think he himself invented his crimson throat? He is wiser than that, I think.

The wasp sits on the porch of her paper castle.

I know someone who kisses the way a flower opens, but more rapidly. Flowers are sweet. They have short, beatific lives. They offer much pleasure. There is nothing in the world that can be said against them. Sad, isn't it, that all they can kiss is the air. Yes, yes! We are the lucky ones.

If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it? Of course, it isn't. Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but only the light that can shine out of a life.

Clear pebbles of the rain

It's true, isn't it, in our world, that the petals pooled with nectar, and the polished thorns are a single thing- that the petals pooled with nectar, and the polished thorns are a single thing- that even the purest light, lacking the robe of darkness, would be without expression- that love itself, without pain, would be no more than a shrug gable comfort.

Are the roses not also--even as the owl is--excessive? Each flower is small and lovely, but in their sheer and silent abundance the roses become an immutable force, as though the work of the wild roses was to make sure that all of us, who come wandering over the sand, may be, for a while, struck to the heart and saturated with a simple joy.

I want to sit down on the sand and look around and get dreamy; I want to see what spirits are peeking out of the faces of the roses.

Lo, and I have discovered how soft bloom turns to green fruit, which turns to sweet fruit. Lo, and I have discovered all winds blow cold at last, and the leaves, so pretty, so many, vanish in the great, black packet of time

Oh, to love what is lovely and will not last! What a task to ask of anything, or anyone, yet it is ours, and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.