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Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil.

— Democritus Freeman (1948)

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Variants

The good things of life are produced by learning with hard work; the bad are reaped of their own accord, without hard work.

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Beauty

More quotes by Democritus

Medicine heals diseases of the body, wisdom frees the soul from passions.

Freeman (1948)

No power and no treasure can outweigh the extension of our knowledge.

Durant (1939)

The animal needing something knows how much it needs, the man does not.

Freeman (1948)

Immoderate desire is the mark of a child, not a man.

Freeman (1948)

The laws would not prevent each man from living according to his inclination, unless individuals harmed each other; for envy creates the beginning of strife.

Freeman (1948)

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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)

To the artist, to the musician, is given the task of creating and expressing beauty--of sensitizing the souls of men.

Howard Hanson

Attribution

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