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“Everything that’s miserable in the world,” Nick the dwarf once said to me, “is because of beauty.”
“Not truth or goodness?” I’d asked.
“Oh, they help. But beauty is the culprit, the real principle of evil.”
“Not wealth?”
“Money is beautiful.”

— Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead (1969)

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Beauty

More quotes by Roger Zelazny

At the end of the season of sorrows comes the time of rejoicing. Spring, like a well-oiled clock, noiselessly indicates this time.

The Last Defender of Camelot (1980)

Between the black of yesterday and the white of tomorrow is the great gray of today, filled with nostalgia and fear of the future.

The Dream Master (1966)

Anyone who rushes toward an unknown peril simply to satisfy a desire for excitement is a fool.

Today We Choose Faces (1973)

There comes a time in the history of all bureaucracies when they must inevitably parody their own functions.

Isle of the Dead (1969)

To struggle against the dreamers who dream ugliness, be they men or gods, cannot but be the will of the Nameless.

Lord of Light (1967)

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