Quotes About Beauty

The sun is not only a painter but a sculptor.

It has been said that trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment rooted in the ground. But they never seem so to me. I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

Trees are the fairest ornaments of nature.

But indeed, it is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of the air, that emanation from the old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth's sweet flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in Summer wear A nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain. Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.

the moon and plum tree make flow'ry springtime shadows— lovers of the night

A maple that has yielded up its life Season on sugar-season—oh, what can be More tragic in its beauty than a maple: Swollen and scarred of trunk, and varicose From gashes in the bark, from too many wounds Of too many spiles that let out too much sap, From too much giving, giving for ninety years, For ninety Moons-of-Maple-Sugar-Making, For ninety Moons-of-Gathering-of-Wild-Rice, For ninety Moons-of-the-Falling-of-the-Leaves, For ninety Moons-of-the-Coming-of-the-Snow.

Beauty's sister is vanity, and its daughter lust.

A great deal has been written and said and sung in praise of green trees. And yet there are comparatively few green trees that are good to eat. Asparagus is probably the best of them, though celery is by no means to be despised.

Ripe 'sparagrass, Fit for lad or lass, To make their water pass: O, 'tis pretty picking With a tender chicken!

She is fond of greens who kisses the gardener.

Virtue's the Paint that can make Wrinkles shine.

The sea was an abstract painting: a band of azure sky above a swatch of indigo water above a ribbon of wet brown sand above a smear of hazel beach... It seemed like the kind of place you might encounter in dreams: too raw and wild to be real, yet somehow familiar at the same time, an ancient impression belonging to my species, imprinted in my genetic code, a knowledge deeper than memory.

At the far edge of my view was the ocean... I could not make sense of its size and grandeur. It was not a pond, not a lake, but a second sky, bluer and more chaotic than the one above it.

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.

I swim down through liquid green heavens, down through the poem of the sea.

Beach air is magical.

Weeds are nature's graffiti.

May all your weeds be wildflowers.

A good garden may have some weeds.

They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others but stewards of their excellence. The summer's flower is to the summer sweet, Though to itself it only live and die, But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

Why does the orange blossom kiss the breeze? Because the breeze first kisses the orange blossom.

A vineyard is planted poetry.

Wine is liquid stardust.