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How was it that destruction could be so beautiful? Was there something in the scale of it? Was there some shadow in people, lusting for it? Or was it just a coincidental combination of the elements, the final proof that beauty has no moral dimension?

— Kim Stanley Robinson Red Mars (1992)

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Beauty

More quotes by Kim Stanley Robinson

The sky itself is the eighth color of the rainbow, spread over the whole sky for us, all the time.

Galileo's Dream (2009)

Historical analogy is the last refuge of people who can’t grasp the current situation.

Red Mars (1992)

It was not power that corrupted people, but fools who corrupted power.

Green Mars (1993)

When some French were assembling an encyclopedia of paranormal experiences, they decided to leave déjà vu out, because it was so common it could not be considered paranormal.

Galileo's Dream (2009)

We live in a universe ruled by very few laws, but the redoubling of violence by violence is one of the main ones.

The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)

All Kim Stanley Robinson 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: Kim Stanley Robinson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.