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I would that you were either less beautiful, or less corrupt. Such perfect beauty does not suit such imperfect morals.

— Ovid

Aut formosa fores minus, aut minus improba, vellem.
Non facit ad mores tam bona forma malos.

Original text (Latin)

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Beauty

More quotes by Ovid

Jupiter from on high laughs at the perjuries of lovers.

Often a silent face has voice and words.

If you give up your quiet life, the bow of Cupid will lose its power.

Tis hard, I admit, yet virtue aims at what is hard, and gratitude for such a service will be all the greater.

Let the man who does not wish to be idle fall in love!

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