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Beauty is a simple passion,
but, oh my friends, in the end
you will dance the fire dance in iron shoes.

— Anne Sexton Transformations (1971)

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Beauty

More quotes by Anne Sexton

You said the anger would come back
just as the love did.

Love Poems (1969)

To love another is something
like prayer and it can't be planned, you just fall
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.

The Complete Poems (1981)

Dearest,
although everything has happened,
nothing has happened.

All My Pretty Ones (1962)

I imitate
a memory of belief
that I do not own.

To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960)

We are all writing God's poem.

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