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There is more or less of pathos in all true beauty. The delight it awakens has an undefinable and, as it were, luxurious sadness, which is perhaps one element of its might. It may be that this feeling springs from a sense of unattained good, of a perfection of being quite at variance with the present, which the beautiful never fails to suggest.

— Henry Theodore Tuckerman

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Beauty

More quotes by Henry Theodore Tuckerman

We discern beyond the smile and the honeyed word, and are sickened at the self-created hollowness of a human heart.

The Optimist (1850)

The soul, by an instinct stronger than reason, ever associates beauty with truth.

The Optimist (1850)

For Truth makes holy Love's illusive dreams,
And their best promise constantly redeems.

Fashion seldom interferes with nature without diminishing her grace and efficiency.

The Optimist (1850)

I often muse upon the life of the true artist until it redeems to my mind, the more prosaic aspects of human existence.

The Optimist (1850)

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Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil.

Democritus Freeman (1948)

True beauty dwells in deep retreats,
Whose veil is unremoved
Till heart with heart in concord beats,
And the lover is beloved.

William Wordsworth

The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they're seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?

André Gide The Immoralist (1902)

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator.

William Shakespeare The Rape of Lucrece (1594)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Henry Theodore Tuckerman (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.