Quotes About Beauty

The beautiful is just as useful as the useful.

But what was tragic about the girl was that she had not been born ugly. She might even have been a pretty child, and the grace proper to her age was still at odds with the repulsive premature aging induced by loose living and poverty. A trace of beauty still lingered in the sixteen-year-old face, like pale sunlight fading beneath the massed clouds of a winter's dawn.

Does not this comprehend all, in fact? and what is there left to desire beyond it? A little garden in which to walk, and immensity in which to dream. At one's feet that which can be cultivated and plucked; over head that which one can study and meditate upon: some flowers on earth, and all the stars in the sky.

A flower should smell sweet, and a woman should have wit.

There comes a day when the young girl glances in this manner. Woe to him who chances to be there! That first gaze of a soul which does not, as yet, know itself, is like the dawn in the sky. It

This garden was no longer a garden, it was a colossal thicket, that is to say, something as impenetrable as a forest, as densely populated as a city, as tremulous as a nest, as tenebrous as a cathedral, as aromatic as a bouquet, as lonely as a tomb, as much a living thing as a crowd.

A beautiful woman is a casus belli; a pretty woman is flagrant misdemeanour. All the invasions of history have been determined by petticoats.

Knowing that she was beautiful, she felt convinced, though in an indistinct way, that she had a weapon. Women play with their beauty as children do with their knives. They wound themselves with it.

He thought her more beautiful than ever, with a beauty that was at once feminine and angelic, that wholeness of beauty that had moved Petrarch to song and brought Dante to his knees.

Cossette, al saber que era hermosa, perdió la gracia de ignorarlo; gracia exquisita, porque la belleza realzada por la sencillez es inefable, y no hay nada más digno de adoración que una inocencia deslumbradora que lleva en la mano, sin saberlo, la llave de un paraíso.

All this is what men call genius, just as they call a painted face beauty and a richly attired figure majesty. They confound the brilliance of the firmament with the star-shaped footprints of a duck in the mud.

War has frightful beauties which we have not concealed; it has also, we acknowledge, some hideous features. One of the most surprising is the prompt stripping of the bodies of the dead after the victory. The dawn which follows a battle always rises on naked corpses.

L'âme qui aime et qui souffre est à l'état sublime.

It seems to me that I am shooting a flower.

Style is the form of the ideal; rhythm is its movement.

The Grave and The Rose The Grave said to the Rose, What of the dews of dawn, Love's flower, what end is theirs? And what of spirits flown, The souls whereon doth close The tomb's mouth unawares? The Rose said to the Grave. The Rose said, In the shade From the dawn's tears is made A perfume faint and strange, Amber and honey sweet. And all the spirits fleet Do suffer a sky-change, More strangely than the dew, To God's own angels new, The Grave said to the Rose

Madame Magloire, retorted the Bishop, you are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the useful. He added after a pause, More so, perhaps.

It was like a hand which had opened and thrown suddenly upon her a handful of sunbeams.

Nous ne sommes pas de ceux qui flattent la guerre; quand l'occasion s'en présente, nous lui disons ses vérités. La guerre a d'affreuses beautés que nous n'avons point cachées; elle a aussi, convenons-en, quelques laideurs. Une des plus surprenantes, c'est le prompt dépouillement des morts après la victoire. L'aube qui suit une bataille se lève toujours sur des cadavres nus.

Vi sono cose che non si deve neppure tentare di dipingere: il sole è fra queste.

There is a spectacle more grand than the sea; it is heaven: there is a spectacle more grand than heaven; it is the inmost recesses of the soul.

In the case of sand as in that of woman, there is a fineness which is treacherous.

Certainly she was wonderfully beautiful. All that could be said of her that was in any sense critical was that there seemed to be a contradiction between the look in her eyes, which tended to melancholy, and the brightness of her smile. This had a somewhat disconcerting effect, so that at moments her charming face was puzzling without ceasing to be delightful.

Cuando le ocurría alguna vez, porque, ¿a quién no le ocurre? Decir: -¡Oh. si fuese rico!- no lo decía nunca echando el lente a una joven bonita, como el señor Guillenormand, sino contemplando un libro.