Beauty Quotes
Shakespeare, Milton and Emerson sit at the top, and Letitia Elizabeth Landon, a poet far less read now than in the 1820s, has a surprising number of entries. Emerson’s Nature (1836) supplies the best-sourced line, that beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue. Coleridge’s Christabel (1797) and Emerson’s poem on the rhodora are the pieces to read in full.
Three lines carry flags. “Beauty is the promise of happiness” is credited to Edmund Burke and marked misattributed. A couplet about beauty’s fading nature having a season is credited to Robert Burns and disputed. “We all have a weakness for beauty” is credited to Albert Camus, also disputed.
Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator.
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Where none admire, 'tis useless to excel;
Where none are beaux, 'tis vain to be a belle.
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
For all that faire is, is by nature good;
That is a signe to know the gentle blood.
The saying that beauty is but skin deep is but a skin-deep saying.
Beauty is a magnet: repels some, attracts many, leaves no one unmoved.
Inasmuch as love grows in you, in so much beauty grows; for love is itself the beauty of the soul.
Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive.