A quarter of an inch of new snow last night, putting down a thin dusting in the woods: the dark brown points of fallen leaves curl up through the snow, making a speckled, polka-dotted forest floor. It is almost dizzying, and beautiful. If I saw it on film, my immediate thought would be, "Too bad they didn't get more snow." In a photograph I wouldn't see the whole woods for what they are, I would be trying to correct them, improve them. It is a habit I would like to break.
John Jerome The Writing Trade: A Year in a Life
Categories: appearance vanity perfectionism inner beauty spiritual beauty

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.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Meditations
Categories: beauty

The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.
John Cage
Categories: beauty

I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?
Jean Kerr
Categories: beauty

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
Henry Miller
Categories: beauty

The words that enlighten the soul are more precious than jewels.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
Categories: beauty

The absence of flaw in beauty is itself a flaw.
Havelock Ellis Impressions and Comments (1914)
Categories: beauty

Like anyone else, there are days I feel beautiful and days I don't, and when I don't, I do something about it.
Cheryl Tiegs O Magazine, May 2004
Categories: beauty

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.
Anne Frank Diary of a Young Girl, 1952
Categories: beauty

If there is one thing worse than being an ugly duckling in a house of swans, it's having the swans pretend there's no difference.
Teena Booth Falling From Fire
Categories: beauty

Just because you are blind, and unable to see my beauty doesn't mean it does not exist.
Margaret Cho Margaret Cho's weblog, 03-23-06
Categories: beauty

Thankfully, beauty is easier to remove than apply, and a swipe of demaquillage in the right direction and you are you once again.
Margaret Cho weblog, 01-27-04
Categories: beauty

I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may - light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.
John Constable
Categories: beauty

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
Sir Francis Bacon "Of Beauty"
Categories: beauty

People often say that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder,' and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder. This empowers us to find beauty in places where others have not dared to look, including inside ourselves.
Salma Hayek
Categories: beauty

When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
R. Buckminster Fuller
Categories: beauty

Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.
Petrarch De Remedies
Categories: beauty

Order is the shape upon which beauty depends.
Pearl Buck
Categories: beauty

Ugly. Is irrelevant. It is an immeasurable insult to a woman, and then supposedly the worst crime you can commit as a woman. But ugly, as beautiful, is an illusion.
Margaret Cho weblog, 01-27-04
Categories: beauty

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
It's loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness.
John Keats The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying, and Quotation
Categories: beauty art the arts

Beauty is altogether in the eyes of the beholder.
Margaret Wolfe Hungerford Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy
Categories: beauty appearances

Beauty passes, but perfection remains with us.
Turkish proverb The Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of World Proverbs
Categories: beauty art the arts nature

The world shall perish not for lack of wonders, but for lack of wonder.
J. B. S. Haldane Phantoms in the Brain
Categories: awe wonder beauty nature enchantment

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless: peacocks and lilies for instance.
John Ruskin Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations
Categories: beauty external appearances

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night... the breath of a buffalo in the winter time... a little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
Crowfoot 1821 A Cherokee Feast of Days: Daily Meditations
Categories: life beauty nature

Beauty is an end in itself, not a means to some other end.
James Ogilvy Living Without a Goal: Finding the Freedom to Live a Creative and Innovative Life by James Ogilvy
Categories: beauty art nature artists

The beautiful! It is beauty seen with the eye of the soul.
Joseph Joubert The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: inner beauty spirituality perception

The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing.
John Muir The Vein of Gold: A Journey to Your Creative Heart
Categories: nature beauty joy happiness

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The Forbes Book of Business Quotations: 14,266 Thoughts on the Business of Life
Categories: balance beauty appreciation

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful we must carry it with us or find it not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
Categories: beauty character perception

When I first open my eyes upon the morning meadows and look out upon the beautiful world, I thank God I am alive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: nature beauty appreciation

The world offers itself to me in a thousand ways, and I ache with an awareness of how infrequently I am able to
Oriah Mountain Dreamer The Invitation
Categories: blessings beauty joy acceptance mindfulness

The sight of anything extremely beautiful, in nature or in art, brings back the memory of what one loves, with the speed of lightning. That is,... all that is beautiful and sublime and the world takes part in the beauty of what one loves, and this unexpected glimpse of happiness immediately fills the eyes with tears. This is how love of the beautiful and love give each other life.
Stendhal The Spirit of Loving
Categories: beauty art nature love happiness

The flowers anew, returning seasons bring;
but beauty faded has no second spring.
Ambrose Phillips The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying, and Quotation
Categories: pride conceit vanity beauty

Beauty will fade, but not goodness.
Philippine proverb The Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of World Proverbs
Categories: beauty appearances soul character

By confronting us with irreducible mysteries that stretch our daily vision to include infinity, nature opens an inviting and guiding path toward a spiritual life.
Thomas Moore The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life
Categories: nature mystery beauty spirituality

We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting.
Kahlil Gibran Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations
Categories: beauty nature soul inspiration

Beauty adorns virtue.
Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo: Discovering the Life of Leornardo da Vinci: A Biography
Categories: inner beauty authenticity integrity character

...beauty has its own heavenly language, loftier than the voices of tongues and lips. It is a timeless language, common to all humanity, a calm lake that attracts the singing rivulets to its depth and makes them silent.
Only our spirits can understand beauty, or live and grow with it. It puzzles our minds; we are unable to describe it in words; it is a sensation that our eyes cannot see, derived from both the one who observes and the one who is looked upon. Real beauty is a ray which emanates from the holy of holies of the spirit, and illuminates the body, as life comes from the depths of the earth and gives color and scent to a flower.
Real beauty lies in the spiritual accord that is called love which can exist between a man and a woman.
Kahlil Gibran The Broken Wings
Categories: beauty love relationships marriage

You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring it with you.
Joseph Joubert The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: beauty perception spirituality soul

The poor need not only bread. The poor also need beauty.
Monsignor Hildebrand The Vein of Gold : A Journey to Your Creative Heart
Categories: poverty need necessity beauty nature

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
Rumi The Vein of Gold: A Journey to Your Creative Heart
Categories: beauty nature actions love

Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: beauty imagination creativity inspiration

One does not need to fast for days and meditate for hours at a time to experience the sense of sublime history which constantly envelops us. All one need do is notice intelligently, if even for a brief moment, a blossoming tree, a forest flooded with autumn colors, an infant smiling.
Simon Greenberg A Grateful Heart: Daily Blessings for the Evening Meal from Buddha to the Beatles
Categories: meditation prayer beauty nature contemplation

Nobody sees a flower--really--it is so small it takes
Georgia O'Keeffe The Artist's Way
Categories: vision nature beauty discovery friendship

...for magic to happen in your life, you must believe in magic.
Grandmother, quoted by Lynn Andrews Walk in Balance: Meditations with Lynn Andrews
Categories: magic miracles mystery enchantment beauty

Beauty's sister is vanity, and its daughter lust.
Russian proverb The Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of World Proverbs
Categories: beauty vanity conceit pride desire

Beauty may have fair leaves, yet bitter fruit.
English proverb The Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of World Proverbs
Categories: beauty appearances vanity pride conceit

A merry heart maketh a cheeful countenance.
King Solomon The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying, and Quotation
Categories: attitude joy happiness enthusiasm appearance beauty

A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives you roses.
Chinese proverb The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: joy happiness kindness giving sharing beauty

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
Kafka Alexandra Stoddard's Book of Days
Categories: aging beauty vision youth life

When you attend to something with true meditative attention, you awaken it in a special way.
Carolyn Forche "Live Welcoming to All" by Sue Monk Kidd, which appeared in the September/October 1997 issue of Weavings.
Categories: vision focus attitude inner beauty inner peace

Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: thought aging youth beauty love nature

Fully to understand a grand and beautiful thought requires, perhaps, as much time as to conceive it.
Joseph Joubert The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: understanding wisdom learning discovery beauty philosophy

The soul, for me, is everything in life. It is in all the beauty as well as in all the agony.
Marion Woodman from the essay "Soul Moments" Handbook for the Soul
Categories: soul beauty pain self-awareness self-nurture spirituality

It is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while.
Don Marquis The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: happiness joy beauty life boredom ennui priorities

The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.
Aristotle The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: beauty soul challenges circumstances life attitude

We live in a world of theophanies. Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary. There are burning bushes all around you. Every tree is full of angels. Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb. Life wants to lead you from crumbs to angels, but this can happen only if you are willing to unwrap the ordinary by staying with it long enough to harvest its treasure.
Macrina Wiederkehr A Tree Full of Angels
Categories: holiness angels revelation ordinary beauty vision

That is the best part of beauty, which a picture cannot express.
Francis Bacon The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
Categories: beauty appearances soul character peace happiness joy

You agree--I'm sure you agree, that beauty is the only thing worth living for.
Agatha Christie Simple Abundance
Categories: beauty nature art appreciation music meaning life

I don't want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.
Carrie Fisher Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: life living beauty essence fulfillment meaning purpose

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
George Bernard Shaw The Portable Curmudgeon
Categories: beauty art creativity artisans sculptors writers painters artists

Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
John Donne The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying, and Quotation
Categories: love marriage vanity beauty conceit divorce relationships

...grant that I may become beautiful in my soul within, and that all my external possessions may be in harmony with my inner self. May I consider the wise to be rich, and may I have such riches as only a person of self-restraint can bear or endure.
Plato A Grateful Heart
Categories: soul spirituality inner beauty possessions materialism wealth wisdom

You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face and show the world all the love in your heart. Then people are going to treat you better. You're going to find, yes you will, that you're beautiful as you feel.
Carole King Tapestry by Carole King
Categories: inner beauty attitude optimism self-image happiness appearances joy joy confidence

The world is a mirror of infinite beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a temple of majesty, yet no man regards it. It is a region of Light and Peace, did not men disquiet it. It is the paradise of God.
Thomas Traherne How to Want What You Have
Categories: world nature beauty paradise perception appreciation peace

Don't be a cynic, and bewail and bemoan. Omit the negative propositions. Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. Set down nothing that will not help somebody.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Categories: cynicism attitude negative positive rejection beauty good helpful

He who does not see the angels and devils in the beauty and malice of life will be far removed from knowledge, and his spirit will be empty of affection.
Kahlil Gibran The Broken Wings by Kahlil Gibran
Categories: beauty danger evil goodness knowledge wisdom spirituality compassion

An enchanted life has many moments when the heart is overwhelmed with beauty and the imagination is electrified by some haunting quality in the world or by a spirit or voice speaking from deep within a thing, a place, or a person. Enchantment may be a state of rapture and ecstasy in which the soul comes to the foreground, and the literal concerns of survival and daily preoccupation at least momentarily fade into the background.
Thomas Moore The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life
Categories: enchantment beauty nature meditation creation soul spirituality imagination

Nobody sees a flower--really--it is so small it takes time--we haven't time--and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.
Georgia O'Keefe The Artist's Way
Categories: vision nature beauty discovery friendship relationships busyness time patience

An enchanted world is one that speaks to the soul, to the mysterious depths of the heart and imagination where we find value, love, and union with the world around us. As mystics of many religions have taught, that sense of rapturous union can give a sensation of fulfillment that makes life purposeful and vibrant.
Thomas Moore The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life
Categories: nature beauty spirituality soul heart imagination value love fulfillment purpose meaning

To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children, to earn the approbation of honest critics; to appreciate beauty; to give of one's self, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived--that is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: laughter love friendship respect children beauty appreciation volunteer play enthusiasm life living success

Be of good cheer. Do not think of today's failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.
Helen Keller The Book of Positive Quotations
Categories: attitude failure success vision persevere determination obstacles problems difficulties challenges overcoming effort beauty

In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, and courage, so long are you young. When the wires are all down and your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, and then only, are you grown old.
General Douglas MacArthur Words for All Occasions
Categories: thought young at heart attitude optimism hope beauty courage love strength bravery pessimism cynicism age aging old

I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves--such an ethical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty...The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.
Albert Einstein The Quotable Einstein
Categories: comfort happy virtue strength kindness beauty truth goodness honesty integrity purity uplifting inspiring attitude focus gratitude

Personally, I experience the greatest degree of pleasure in having contact with works of art. They furnish me with happy feelings of an intensity such as I cannot derive from other realms.
Albert Einstein The Quotable Einstein
Categories: art beauty joy happiness artists artistic expression creativity creative expression artwork

"What makes the desert beautiful," said the little prince, "is that somewhere it hides a well..."
Antoine De Saint-Exupery The Little Prince
Categories: inner beauty soul spirit secret mystery discovery exploration self-discovery self-awareness growth

This is the precious present, regardless of what yesterday was like, regardless of what tomorrow may bring. When your inner eyes open, you can find immense beauty hidden within the inconsequential details of daily life. When your inner ears open, you can hear the subtle, lovely music of the universe everywhere you go. When the heart of your heart opens, you can take deep pleasure in the company of the people around you--family, friends, acquaintances, or strangers--including those whose characters are less than perfect, just as your character is less than perfect. When you are open to the beauty, mystery, and grandeur of ordinary existence, you "get it" that it always has been beautiful, mysterious, and grand and always will be.
This is the precious present.
Timothy Ray Miller How to Want What You Have
Categories: present now today yesterday past tomorrow future awareness appreciation beauty routine love joy relationships family friends perfection acceptance mystery grandeur

You are to gather up the joys and sorrows, the struggles, the beauty, love, dreams and hopes of every hour that they may be consecrated at the altar of daily life.
MacRina Wiederkehr A Tree Full of Angels
Categories: joy sorrow pain suffering love beauty dreams routine living meaning wisdom daily events happiness problems struggles difficulties mistakes sadness goals hopes spirituality

Beauty can't amuse you, but brainwork--reading, writing, thinking--can.
Helen Gurley Brown Treasury of Women's Quotations
Categories: beauty appearances character books philosophy looks vanity growth self-improvement learning education books journaling study intellect mind thought wisdom knowledge