#beauty

The self-esteem of western women is founded on physical being (body mass index, youth, beauty). This creates a tricky emphasis on image, but the internalized locus of self-worth saves lives. Western men are very different. In externalizing the source of their self-esteem, they surrender all emotional independence. (Conquest requires two parties, after all.) A man cannot feel like a man without a partner, corporation, team. Manhood is a game played on the terrain of opposites. It thus follows that male sense of self disintegrates when the Other is absent. ↗

— Antonella Gambotto-Burke

#boys #center #centre #conquest #femininity

The pursuit of the beautiful was, for [Duruflé], a gesture of the soul, not merely a function or an exercise of musical giftedness, or even of liturgical necessity. That is, perhaps, what Mme Duruflé meant in saying that he had ... a Gregorian soul. ↗

— James E. Frazier

#beauty

I want to kiss you," I say, "but I seem to be holding this cat." Skunk lifts his hand and touches it to the side of my face. His fingers are warm from carrying the hot skillet to the table. He regards me very seriously, and for a moment I wonder if he's about to tell me we should Focus on Bicycle Repair. Instead he just looks at me for a very long time. "You're beautiful," says Skunk, "and completely batshit. ↗

— Hilary T. Smith

#young-adult #beauty

Every now and then the city shook its soul out. It assailed you with an image, or a day, or a crime, or a terror, or a beauty so difficult to wrapy your mind around that you had to shake your head in disbelief. ↗

— Colum McCann

#beauty

They're only trees. Only trees. Whose afraid of lonely trees? ↗

— Ruth Frances Long

#jack #jenny #poems #realm #trees

The people of each country get more like the people of every other country. They have no character, no beauty, no ideals, no culture-nothing, nothing.”… “Everything’s getting gray, and it’ll be grayer. ↗

— Paul Bowles

#beauty

The soft rush of taxis by him, and laughter, laughters hoarse as a crow's, incessant and loud, with the rumble of the subways underneath - and over all, the revolutions of light, the growings and recedings of light - light dividing like pearls - forming and reforming in glittering bars and circles and monstrous grotesque figures cut amazingly on the sky. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#light #new-york #times-square #beauty

Darcy speaking to Georgiana: Even though Elizabeth may not have the appearance of her sister Jane, her inner beauty diffuses to the surface in a most splendid way. ↗

— Noe Villarreal

#beauty

I look through the cage...an absolute beauty of yours... ↗

— Ankur Kumar Shah

#appreciation #beauty #cage #caged-bird #caged-view

I have no way of knowing whether you, who eventually will read this record, like stories or not. If you do not, no doubt you have turned these pages without attention. I confess that I love them. Indeed, it often seems to me that of all the good things in the world, the only ones humanity can claim for itself are stories and music; the rest, mercy, beauty, sleep, clean water and hot food (as the Ascian would have said) are all the work of the Increate. Thus, stories are small things indeed in the scheme of the universe, but it is hard not to love best what is our own—hard for me, at least. ↗

— Gene Wolfe

#beauty