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Use harms and even destroys beauty. The noblest function of an object is to be contemplated.

— Miguel de Unamuno Niebla [Mist (1914)

El uso estropea y hasta destruye toda belleza. La función más noble de los objetos es la de ser contemplados.

Original text (Spanish)

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Beauty

More quotes by Miguel de Unamuno

It is sad not to be loved, but it is much sadder not to be able to love.

Our life is a hope which is continually converting itself into memory and memory in its turn begets hope.

Isolation is the worst possible counselor.

Only those who doubt really believe, and those who do not doubt are neither tempted against their faith nor do they truly believe.

The Life of Don Quixote and Sancho (1914)

There is no tyranny in the world more hateful than that of ideas.

All Miguel de Unamuno quotes →

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