Quotes About Beauty

Was it their face, in fact, for which they were guilty? Did it fail to please in some way? Worse yet, did it offend? IN

and we both know how beautiful the book will be, how clearly it will speak to something within us—some previously unarticulated thought or reflection that, once recognized, we will never want to be without again.

She wore her age the way Diane Keaton did—as if she came from a distant planet where a beautiful older woman was as much prized as a beautiful older table.

She seemed fragile like a moonflower – destined to bloom for a single lovely night, and then to fade and fall.

There was so much of beauty here: the neat, small tracks of a foraging creature, stoat or marten; the inticate tracery of a skeleton leaf, still clinging vainly to its parent tree as, little by little, time stripped it of its substance, leaving only the delicate remembrance of what it had been.

When I saw the illustration a new idea came to me. Might it not be possible to have Satsuko's face and figure carved on my tombstone in the manner of such a Bodhisattva, to use her as the secret model for a Kannon or Seishi? After all, I have no religious beliefs, any sort of faith will do for me; my only conceivable divinity is Satsuko. Nothing could be better than to lie buried under her image.

The sun never knew how wonderful it was," the architect Louis Kahn said, "until it fell on the wall of a building

Me gusta ver cómo se esfuerza por mantenerse sobria y pálida y por parecer fría. En esas ocasiones hay en ella algo tan seductor que desafía la descripción.

My head was a stage wrapped in a curtain of black velvet, and on the stage stood a single actress, named Naomi.

Again, and yet again, I looked back at the actor's hands, comparing them with my own; and there was no difference between them. Yet strangely the hands of the man on the stage were indescribably beautiful, while those on my knees were but ordinary hands.

Era mortificante pensar que otro hombre había descubierto ese exótico aspecto de su belleza que a mí se me había pasado por alto. Supongo que los maridos no son tan observadores, porque miran a sus esposas de una manera invariable.

El muchacho le explicó, como pronunciando un sermón, que el mundo de los hombres era vil y estaba lleno de mentiras. En él, solo el arte conducía a la vida verdadera y eterna, y él mismo era grande porque sabía lo que se encontraba más allá de las puertas del arte. La muchacha no podía dudar de la nobleza de sus palabras.

Pero eso que generalmente se llama bello no es más que una sublimación de las realidades de la vida, y así fue como nuestros antepasados, obligados a residir, lo quisieran o no, en viviendas oscuras, descubrieron un día lo bello en el seno de la sombra y no tardaron en utilizar la sombra para obtener efectos estéticos. El elogio de la sombra

Wir sind der Meinung, Schönheit sei nicht in den Objekten selber zu suchen, sondern im Helldunkel, im Schattenspiel, das sich zwischen Objekten entfaltet.

Und wer unbedingt diese Unansehnlichkeit betrachten will, der wird zugleich jegliche vorhandene Schönheit zunichte machen, gerade wie wenn er ein Licht von hundert Kerzenstärken auf die Wandnische eines Teeraums richtete.

Während die Abendländer den Schmutz radikal aufzudecken und zu entfernen trachten, konservieren ihn die Ostasiaten sorgfältig und ästhetisieren ihn, so wie er ist - könnte man, wenn man wollte, beschönigend sagen; aber wie auch immer, es ist unser Schicksal, dass wir nun einmal Dinge mit Spuren von Menschenhänden, Lampenruß, Wind und Regen lieben oder auch daran erinnernde Farbtönungen und Lichtwirkungen.

Those touched-up images were not what her mirrors had been telling her for some time.

Her eyes, nose, hands, feet... Each part was a supreme delicacy, and I was insatiable.

Como era tan presumida como hermosa, si no se veía adorada, se sentía como desdeñada. Parecía convencida de que, si se rendía de amor ante alguien, se rebajaba.

The parlor may have its charms, but the Japanese toilet truly is a place of spiritual repose.

Such is our way of thinking - we find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates.

Modern man, in his well-lit house, knows nothing of the beauty of gold; but those who lived in the dark houses of the past were not merely captivated by its beauty, they also knew its practical value; for gold, in these dim rooms, must have served the function of a reflector. Their use of gold leaf and gold dust was not mere extravagance. Its reflective properties were put to use as a source of illumination.

Pero cuando, sustituidas éstas (las lámparas eléctricas con pantalla de papel) por los candelabros, de luz todavía más tenue, se observan las bandejas y boles bajo el parpadeo de la trémula llama, se descubre cómo el brillo de todos esos objetos lacados, hondo y espeso como las aguas de un estanque, va revistiéndose de un encanto completamente diferente al que había mostrado hasta entonces.

It's as though a smile is ageless, or perhaps eternal, independent of the decay and collapse of the surrounding features.