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I know of nothing useful in life except what is beautiful or creates beauty.

— Henry Adams Esther: A Novel (1884)

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Beauty

More quotes by Henry Adams

It's always the good men who do the most harm in the world.

Every one who marries goes it blind, more or less.

Esther: A Novel (1884)

We never despised the world or its opinions, we only failed to find out its existence.

Someday science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide, by blowing up the world.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

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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)

Attribution

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