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There is nothing truly beautiful but that which can never be of any use whatsoever; everything useful is ugly.

— Théophile Gautier

Il n'y a de vraiment beau que ce qui ne peut servir à rien; tout ce qui est utile est laid.

Original text (French)

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Beauty

More quotes by Théophile Gautier

Fancy demanding feeling from poetry! That's not the main thing at all. Radiant words, words of light, full of rhythm and music, that's poetry.

I am a man for whom the visible world exists.

Eyes so transparent that through them one sees the lucent soul.

Chance is the pseudonym of God when he did not want to sign.

Art for Art's Sake means, for its adepts, the pursuit of pure beauty – without any other consideration.

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