Quotes About Beauty

We often praise the evening clouds, And tints so gay and bold, But seldom think upon our God, Who tinged these clouds with gold.

Well, contemplation is always a gift, right? So you have to ask for it. It is a thing for which to beg, honestly, because it seems to me when we enter upon the contemplative gaze it is a sliver of revelation. We ask God to show us the beauty of the familiar, the complexity behind the obvious, and the struggle behind repeated failures, the patterns of behavior, because in the end the dysfunctions around us are not ever really conquered, they fade away and are replaced by new ones.

Now the summer came to passAnd flowers through the grassJoyously sprang,While all the tribes of birds sang.

Seated alone by shadowy bamboos, I strum my lyre and laugh aloud; None know that I am here, deep in the woods; Only the bright moon comes to shine on me.

Clear waters drift through the immensity of a tall forest. In front of me a huge river mouth receives the long wind. Deep ripples hold white sand and white fish swimming as in a void. I sprawl on a big rock, billows nourishing my humble body. I gargle with water and wash my feet. A fisherman pauses out on the surf. So many fish long for bait. I look only to the east with its lotus leaves.

Watching wild landscapes I forget distance and come to the water's edge.

I burned incense, swept the earth, and waited for a poem to come... Then I laughed, and climbed the mountain, leaning on my staff. How I'd love to be a master of the blue sky's art: see how many sprigs of snow-white clouds he's brushed in so far today

My mother named me after a miracle of nature: Waris means desert flower. The desert flower blooms in a barren environment where few living things can survive.

The designer George Lois, who claims some of his best ideas have come while meandering through the Metropolitan Museum, says, "Museums are the custodians of epiphanies.")

Never judge a work of art by its defects.

If an Artist love his Art for its own sake, he will delight in excellence wherever he meets it, as well in the work of another as in his own.

Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese absolutely enchanted me, for they took away all sense of subject.... It was the poetry of color which I felt, procreative in its nature, giving birth to a thousand things which the eye cannot see, and distinct from their cause.

After all, it is the divinity within that makes the divinity without and I have been more fascinated by a woman of talent and intelligence, though deficient in personal charms, than I have been by the most regular beauty.

A few amber clouds floated in the sky without a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually into a pure apple-green, and from that into the deep blue of the mid-heaven.

Poetry had breathed over and sanctified the land.

There is a serene and settled majesty to woodland scenery that enters into the soul and delights and elevates it, and fills it with noble inclinations.

The language, of course, is quaint and antiquated, so that the beauty of many of its golden phrases will scarcely be perceived at the present day, but it is impossible not to be charmed with the genuine sentiment, the delightful artlessness and urbanity, which prevail throughout it. The descriptions of Nature too, with which it is embellished, are given with a truth, a discrimination, and a freshness, worthy of the most cultivated periods of the art.

Presently a choir of small voices chanted forth an old Christmas carol, the burden of which was— Rejoice, our Saviour he was born On Christmas Day in the morning. I rose softly, slipt on my clothes, opened the door suddenly, and beheld one of the most beautiful little fairy groups that a painter could imagine. It consisted of a boy and two girls, the eldest not more than six, and lovely as seraphs. They were going the rounds of the house and singing at every chamber door

To look upon its grass grown yard, where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that there at least the dead might rest in peace.

That is beautiful which is produced by the inner need, which springs from the soul.

Everything that is dead quivers. Not only the things of poetry, stars, moon, wood, flowers, but even a white trouser button glittering out of a puddle in the street... Everything has a secret soul, which is silent more often than it speaks.

With cold eyes and indifferent mind the spectators regard the work. Connoissers admire the "skill" (as one admires a tightrope walker), enjoy the "quality of painting" (as one enjoys a pasty). But hungry souls go hungry away. The vulgar herd stroll through the rooms and pronounce the pictures "nice" or "splendid." Those who could speak have said nothing, those who could hear have heard nothing.

That is beautiful which springs from inner need, which springs from the soul

To those that are not accustomed to it the inner beauty appears as ugliness because humanity in general inclines to the outer and knows nothing of the inner.