Quotes
Quotes about Beauty
Exceeding fair she was not; and yet fair
In that she never studied to be fairer
Than Nature made her; beauty cost her nothing,
Her virtues were so rare.
O, thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.
Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.
A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,--
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty.
'T is beauty truly blent, whose red and white
Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on:
Lady, you are the cruell'st she alive
If you will lead these graces to the grave
And leave the world no copy.
O Proserpina,
For the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall
From Dis's waggon! daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength,--a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one.
Could I come near your beauty with my nails,
I 'd set my ten commandments in your face.
As is the bud bit with an envious worm
Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air,
Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.
Her beauty makes
This vault a feasting presence full of light.
Beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And death's pale flag is not advanced there.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough,
If she unmask her beauty to the moon:
Virtue itself'scapes not calumnious strokes:
The canker galls the infants of the spring
Too oft before their buttons be disclosed,
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
Contagious blastments are most imminent.
He hath a daily beauty in his life.
For he being dead, with him is beauty slain,
And, beauty dead, black chaos comes again.
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
The ornament of beauty is suspect,
A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.
And beauty, making beautiful old rhyme.
For where is any author in the world
Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?
Learning is but an adjunct to ourself.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
Underneath this stone doth lie
As much beauty as could die;
Which in life did harbour give
To more virtue than doth live.
There is music in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument; for there is music wherever there is harmony, order, or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres.
In naked beauty more adorn'd,
More lovely than Pandora.
Hung over her enamour'd, and beheld
Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep,
Shot forth peculiar graces.
Beauty stands
In the admiration only of weak minds
Led captive.
Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power,
After offence returning, to regain
Love once possess'd.
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks and rivers wide;
Towers and battlements it sees
Bosom'd high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighboring eyes.
