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Vanquished in life, his death
By beauty made amends:
The passing of his breath
Won his defeated ends.

— Lionel Johnson By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross (1895)

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Beauty

More quotes by Lionel Johnson

Alone he rides, alone,
The fair and fatal king:
Dark night is all his own,
That strange and solemn thing.

By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross (1895)

Dark Angel, with thine aching lust
To rid the world of penitence:
Malicious Angel, who still dost
My soul such subtile violence!

The Dark Angel (1895)

Ill times may be; she hath no thought of time:
She reigns beside the waters yet in pride.

Some players upon plaintive strings
Publish their wistfulness abroad;
I have not spoken of these things,
Save to one man, and unto God.

Our wearier spirit faints,
Vexed in the world‘s employ:
His soul was of the saints;
And art to him was joy.

By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross (1895)

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