#beauty

At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled after a night of rain. I dip my cupped hands. I drink a long time. It tastes like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold into my body, waking the bones. I hear them deep inside me, whispering oh what is that beautiful thing that just happened? ↗

— Mary Oliver

#beauty

Before examining this more carefully and investigating its consequences, I want to dwell for a moment in the contemplation of God, to ponder His attributes in me, to see, admire, and adore the beauty of His boundless light, insofar as my clouded insight allows. Believing that the supreme happiness of the other life consists wholly of the contemplation of divine greatness, I now find that through less perfect contemplation of the same sort I can gain the greatest joy available in this life. ↗

— René Descartes

#happiness #philosophy #purpose #thinking #beauty

People see you as an object, not as a person, and they project a set of expectations onto you. People who don't have it think beauty is a blessing, but actually it sets you apart. ↗

— Candice Bergen

#apart #beauty #blessing #expectations #object

There are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness. ↗

— Stendhal

#happiness #beauty

Children must early learn the the beauty of generosity. They are taught to give what they prize most, that they may taste the happiness of giving. ↗

— Charles Alexander Eastman

#generosity #happiness #life-lessons #beauty

What matters poverty? What matters anything to him who is enamoured of our art? Does he not carry in himself every joy and every beauty? ↗

— Sarah Bernhardt

#art #beauty #carry #does #enamoured

As she bends for a Kleenex in the dark, I am thinking of other girls: the girl I loved who fell in love with a lion--she lost her head over it--we just necked a lot; of the girl who fell in love with the tightrope, got addicted to getting high wired and nothing else was enough; all the beautiful, damaged women who have come through my life and I wonder what would have happened if I'd met them sooner, what they were like before they were so badly wounded. All this time I thought I'd been kissing, but maybe I'm always doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, kissing dead girls in hopes that the heart will start again. Where there's breath, I've heard, there's hope. ↗

— Daphne Gottlieb

#poetry #women #beauty

I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men, and the colour of things: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all things in a phrase, all existence in an epigram: whatever I touched I made beautiful ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#beauty #literature #philosophy #art

Even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less then Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#humor #men #beauty

...then he looked at my T-shirt and saw Byron's picture on it and he quoted "She Walks in Beauty," which is like my favorite poem next to the one by Baudelaire about his girlfriend being nothing but worm food, except that Lily called that one first because Baudelaire is her fave poet and so she got the shirt with him on it, even though Byron is way more scrumptious and I would do him on sharp gravel if I had the chance. --from The Chronicles of Abby Normal ↗

— Christopher Moore

#you-suck #beauty