Top 100 Beauty Quotes of All Time

A short, finished list rather than an endless feed: 100 of the best beauty quotes ever written, picked out of the full beauty archive on QuoteForever. You will find Charles Baudelaire, Henry Ward Beecher, Christopher Morley and Drew Barrymore among them.

Read the list top to bottom, or use it as a starting point - every author name links to everything else they said, and every quote has its own page you can share or turn into an image.

1

What place is so rugged and so homely that there is no beauty; if you only have a sensibility to beauty?

2

No woman can be handsome by the force of features alone, any more that she can be witty by only the help of speech.

3

Friends love misery, in fact. Sometimes, especially if we are too lucky or too successful or too pretty, our misery is the only thing that endears us to our friends.

4

If we analyze the operations of scenes of beauty upon the mind, and consider the intimate relation of the mind upon the nervous system and the whole physical economy, the action and reaction which constantly occur between bodily and mental conditions, the reinvigoration which results from such scenes is readily comprehended. . . . The enjoyment of scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet exercises it; tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the influence of the mind over the body gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigoration to the whole system.

5

The world is truly beautiful solely in the eyes of a true philosopher.

6

Beauty is part of the finished language by which goodness speaks.

7

Every girl should use what Mother Nature gave her before Father Time takes it away.

8

It’s hard to stay mad, when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life...

9

Mozart's music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.

10

I insist on believing that beauty elevates human beings.

11

It seems like the chaos of this world is accelerating, but so is the beauty in the consciousness of more and more people.

12

Mathematics and art are quite different. We could not publish so many papers that used, repeatedly, the same idea and still command the respect of our colleagues.

13

When beauty is universal, it loses its power to move the heart, and only its absence can produce any emotional effect.

14

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

15

When I began to photograph nudes, I let myself be guided by this camera, and instead of photographing what I saw, I photographed what the camera was seeing. I interfered very little, and the lens produced anatomical images and shapes which my eyes had never observed.

16

Beauty is not the purpose of creation, it is its reward. Its appearance, often late in the day, is no more than an indication that the disrupted equilibrium between man and nature has once again been restored by art. Submitted to this test, what remains of contemporary works of art?

17

Handsome, thin, sophisticated men often fall madly in love with larger women, we just never see it on TV.

18

I used to go around looking as frumpy as possible because it was inconceivable you could be attractive as well as be smart. It wasn't until I started being myself, the way I like to turn out to meet people that I started to get any work.

19

I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.

20

An artist is an artist only because of his exquisite sense of beauty, a sense which shows him intoxicating pleasures, but which at the same time implies and contains an equally exquisite sense of all deformities and all disproportion.

21

For me, Romanticism is the most recent and the most current expression of beauty.

22

It is this admirable and immortal instinct for beauty which causes us to regard the earth and its spectacles as a glimpse, a correspondence of the beyond.

23

There is no beauty like that which was spoiled by an accident; no accomplishments and graces are so to be envied as those that circumstances rudely hindered the development of.

24

To sigh, yet feel no pain; To weep, yet scarce know why; To sport an hour with Beauty's chain, Then throw it idly by.

25

To be surrounded by beautiful things has much influence upon the human creature; to make beautiful things has more.

26

I don't speak particularly well. That's one of the consequences of being extremely ugly.

27

All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful: but the beauty is grim.

28

Beauty is ever to the lonely mind a shadow fleeting; she is never plain. She is a visitor who leaves behind the gift of grief, the souvenir of pain.

29

The world is a crazy, beautiful, ugly complicated place, and it keeps moving on from crisis to strangeness to beauty to weirdness to tragedy. The caravan keeps moving on, and the job of the longform writer or filmmaker or radio broadcaster is to stop - is to pause - and when the caravan goes away, that's when this stuff comes.

30

I love being my age. I love getting older. What you lose in looks, you gain in wisdom. I might not be as physically beautiful on the outside today, but I'm much more beautiful on the inside. True beauty comes from inside.

31

Visual surprise is natural in the Caribbean; it comes with the landscape, and faced with its beauty, the sigh of History dissolves.

32

I'm no natural beauty. If I'm gonna have any looks at all, I'm gonna have to create them.

33

I guess we're living in a pretty sensitive world and there's nothing you can do about that.

34

Let's just say beauty inspires me. But I like all beauty - I think it really comes from the inside out.

35

In the 19th century, you had bourgeois art without politics - an almost frozen idea of what beauty is.

36

I swear to god; happiness is the best makeup.

37

I personally battled with my own body image for years. I used to tell myself, You can't wear anything sleeveless or strapless. And all of a sudden I was like, What if I just didn't send such negative messages to my brain and said, wear it and enjoy it? And now I'm more comfortable in clothes than ever.

38

I despair of the Republic! Such dreariness, such whining sallow women, such utter absence of the amenities, such crass food, crass manners, crass landscape!! What a horror it is for a whole nation to be developing without the sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast.

39

I'm attracted to soccer's capacity for beauty. When well played, the game is a dance with a ball.

40

It's really hard to find good movies, and that's pretty much what I try to find, good movies.

41

One of the basic things about a string is that it can vibrate in many different shapes or forms, which gives music its beauty.

42

Beauty is not a means, not a way of furthering a thing in the world. It is a result; it belongs to ordering, to form, to aftereffect.

43

All things are perceived in the light of charity, and hence under the aspect of beauty; for beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love.

44

We have descended into the garden and caught three hundred slugs. How I love the mixture of the beautiful and the squalid in gardening. It makes it so lifelike.

45

There’s beauty all around our paths, If but our watchful eyes Can trace it ’midst familiar things, And through their lowly guise.

46

Truth is a thing immortal and perpetual, and it gives to us a beauty that fades not away in time.

47

When I was young my Father used to tell me that the two most worthwhile pursuits in life were the pursuit of truth and of beauty and I believe that Alfred Nobel must have felt much the same when he gave these prizes for literature and the sciences.

48

It is only through the morning gate of the beautiful that you can penetrate into the realm of knowledge. That which we feel here as beauty we shall one day know as truth.

49

Grace is the beauty of form under the influence of freedom.

50

The ever increasing spiritual damage caused by life within the big city will make this hunger practically uncontrollable when we build here on this the landscape of our homeland we must be clear that we will protect its beauty.

51

Though beauty is, with the most apt similitude, I had almost said with the most literal truth, called a flower that fades and dies almost in the very moment of its maturity; yet there is, methinks, a kind of beauty which lives even to old age; a beauty that is not in the features, but, if I may be allowed the expression, shines through them. As it is not merely corporeal it is not the object of mere sense, nor is it to be discovered but by persons of true taste and refined sentiment.

52

The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colours or the words must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.

53

I am pretty tenacious as a perfectionist in terms of getting something right.

54

The only person who acts sensibly is my tailor. He takes my measure anew every time he sees me. Everyone else goes by their old measurements.

55

Faith goes out through the window when beauty comes in at the door.

56

Many a genius has been slow of growth. Oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed.

57

Beauty of expression is so akin to the voice of the sea.

58

That rarest gift to Beauty, Common Sense!

59

In each person I catch the fleeting suggestion of something beautiful and swear eternal friendship with that.

60

But, when the work was finished, the Craftsman kept wishing that there were someone to ponder the plan of so great a work, to love its beauty, and to wonder at its vastness.

61

The arts, quite simply, nourish the soul. They sustain, comfort, inspire. There is nothing like that exquisite moment when you first discover the beauty of connecting with others in celebration of larger ideals and shared wisdom.

62

The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

63

I really like where Tony Robbins says that we're all hypnotized to see beauty this one specific way, and it's true.

64

We've become obsessed with beauty and the fountain of youth and, frankly, I'm really saddened by the way women mutilate their faces today in search of that.

65

We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it.

66

Now, if the principle of toleration were once admitted into classical education - if it were admitted that the great object is to read and enjoy a language, and the stress of the teaching were placed on the few things absolutely essential to this result, if the tortoise were allowed time to creep, and the bird permitted to fly, and the fish to swim, towards the enchanted and divine sources of Helicon - all might in their own way arrive there, and rejoice in its flowers, its beauty, and its coolness.

67

The sensation of seeing extremely fine women, with superb forms, perfectly unconscious of undress, and yet evidently aware of their beauty and dignity, is worth a week's seasickness to experience... [to me] the effect [of a Siva dance] was that of a dozen Rembrandts intensified into the most glowing beauty of life and motion.

68

In art economy is always beauty.

69

Swans moulting die, snow melts to tears, Roses do blush and hang their heads

70

Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.

71

Then read from the treasured volume the poem of thy choice, and lend to the rhyme of the poet the beauty of thy voice.

72

When God thought of mother, He must have laughed with satisfaction, and framed it quickly - so rich, so deep, so divine, so full of soul, power, and beauty, was the conception.

73

The first act of awe, when man was struck with the beauty or wonder of Nature, was the first spiritual experience.

74

Without painting, sculpture, music, poetry, and the emotions produced by natural beauty of every kind, life would lose half its charm.

75

I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.

76

O beautiful white land, olives and wild anemone and violet mingled among the shale, and purple wings of little winter-butterflies say, here Psyche, the soul, lies.

77

Could beauty be beaten out, O youth the cities have sent to strike at each other's strength, it is you who have kept her alight.

78

For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.

79

...a major triumph of mathematical imagination: the use of visual imagery to condense a large quantity of information into a single comprehensible picture... Mathematicians are just beginning to understand these basic building blocks of change and to analyze how they combine. The methodology involved has a very different spirit from traditional modeling with differential equations: it is more like chemistry than calculus, requiring careful counterpoint between analysis and synthesis.

80

I always say you can never be extravagant with beauty. Beauty is God made real. Beauty is life.

81

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me.

82

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate.

83

Beauty is a luster which love bestows to guile the eye. Therefore it may be said that only when the brain is without love will the eye look and see no beauty.

84

The world of ideas which it [mathematics] discloses or illuminates, the contemplation of divine beauty and order which it induces, the harmonious connexion of its parts, the infinite hierarchy and absolute evidence of the truths with which it is concerned, these, and such like, are the surest grounds of the title of mathematics to human regard, and would remain unimpeached and unimpaired were the plan of the universe unrolled like a map at our feet, and the mind of man qualified to take in the whole scheme of creation at a glance.

85

I discovered that the horse is life itself, a metaphor but also an example of life's mystery and unpredictability, of life's generosity and beauty, a worthy object of repeated and ever changing contemplation.

86

Had I made capital on my prettiness, I should have closed the doors of public employment to women for many a year, by the very means which now makes them weak, underpaid competitors in the great workshop of the world.

87

I believe it's time that women truly owned their superpowers and used their beauty and strength to change the world around them.

88

Whenever, at a party, I have been in the mood to study fools, I have always looked for a great beauty: they always gather round her like flies around a fruit stall.

89

This is part of the involuntary bargain we make with the world just by being alive. We get to experiences the splendor of nature, the beauty of art, the balm of love and the sheer joy of existence, always with the knowledge that illness, injury, natural disaster, or pure evil can end it in an instant for ourselves or someone we love.

90

I like living in the 20th century... to me the world has never been more beautiful. I am trying to paint the real world I live in, as beautifully as I can with my own eyes.

91

I find myself moved by man in his new violent environment. I want to paint this explicitly and beautifully.

92

I don't have any beauty shop memories. I remember the barber shop.

93

Love yourself. It is important to stay positive because beauty comes from the inside out.

94

The man who lives without conflict, who lives with beauty and love, is not frightened of death because to love is to die.

95

I think that the most important thing a woman can have - next to talent, of course - is her hairdresser.

96

I have so little sex appeal that my gynecologist calls me "sir."

97

For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of battle. It has the power to give grief or universality that lends it a youthful beauty.

98

I am a lady young in beauty waiting Until my truelove comes, and then we kiss.

99

Nonmathematical people sometimes ask me, “You know math, huh? Tell me something I’ve always wondered, What is infinity divided by infinity?” I can only reply, “The words you just uttered do not make sense. That was not a mathematical sentence. You spoke of ‘infinity’ as if it were a number. It’s not. You may as well ask, 'What is truth divided by beauty?’ I have no clue. I only know how to divide numbers. ‘Infinity,’ ‘truth,’ ‘beauty’—those are not numbers.

100

With a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.

More Beauty quotes

This is the short list. The full beauty quotes collection holds every quote on the subject in the archive, and the picture quotes are ready to share as images.

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