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Beauty is as tangible as blood, in a way. It is a separate, distinct force that inhabits the bodies of men and women. You must have noticed the vacuity that accompanies perfect beauty in so many women...the force so strong that it drives out all other forces and lives vampirishly at the expense of intelligence and goodness and conscience and all else.

— C. L. Moore Northwest of Earth (1954)

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Beauty

More quotes by C. L. Moore

There’s no such thing as a theatrical troupe without conflicts.

Doomsday Morning (1957)

Only fools offend me, woman, and they but once.

Jirel of Joiry (1969)

Nothing I have ever written was given the slightest deliberation. It was there in the typewriter and it came out, a total bypassing of the brain.

And not until then did she remember how fatal it is said to be to accept a gift from a demon. Buy, or earn it, but never accept the gift.

Jirel of Joiry (1969)

When you’re young you never doubt yourself. You never wonder if you’re justified. But as a man gets older he learns to doubt. Whether he can do a thing—whether he should.

Doomsday Morning (1957)

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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: C. L. Moore (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.