Quotes About Aesthetics

In judging of a beautiful statue, the aesthetic faculty is absolutely and completely gratified by the splendid curves of those marble lips that are dumb to our complaint, the noble modelling of those limbs that are powerless to help us.

What beauty is, I know not, though it adheres to many things.

Architecture is the thoughtful making of space.

Art strives for form, and hopes for beauty.

How did the human eye so arrange for itself the lines and colors of the human creature (surely a comparatively ugly animal?) that they wavered and re-formed into this shape we have conceived to be beauty? Strange illusion!

The soft throb and glow roused in my breast by the gilt letters of four or five different languages winking at me from scores of handsomely tooled bindings—the sight of so much knowledge so beautifully presented—swiftly flamed out.

Ugliness is in the eye of the beholder. I learned that at my mother's knee and other low joints

At one of the annual conventions of the American Society for Aesthetics much confusion arose when the Society for Anesthetics met at the same time in the same hotel.

Beauty is not defined by the masses but by the opinion of the individual.

Exactitude is the lowest form of pictorial gratification.

Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.

Whatever is in any way beautiful hath its source of beauty in itself, and is complete in itself; praise forms no part of it. So it is none the worse nor the better for being praised.

Does the emerald lose its beauty for lack of admiration? Does gold, or ivory, or purple? A lyre or a dagger, a rosebud or a sapling?

Beautiful things are beautiful in themselves. They are not beautiful because they are admired. Praise adds nothing to beauty, and scorn can't detract from it. Just think of the things that are considered beautiful by the vulgar.

Everything which is in any way beautiful is beautiful in itself, and terminates in itself, not having praise as part of itself.

Design is more important than technology in most consumer applications.

The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design, because that is what it lives with. The new becomes threatening, the old reassuring.

A lot of the key to Apple's succes is Designing technology in order to hide it.

Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity.

I've been looking at the iPod- the Apple iPod. One of the interesting things about the iPod, one of the things that people love most about it is not the technology; it's the box it comes in

Websites should look good from the inside and out.

The problem of architecture as I see it is the problem of all art – the elimination of the human element from the consideration of the form.

I like it to be visually powerful, intellectually elegant, and above all, timeless.

I think architecture becomes interesting when it has a double character, that is, when it is as simple as possible but, at the same time as complex as possible