#al

Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#been #catch #completely #constitution #had

But the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt comes off in our hands. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#always #comes #disparaging #extent #gilt

I hate that which we have decided to call realism, even though I have been made one of its high priests. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#call #decided #even #hate #high

One mustn't always believe that feeling is everything. In the arts, it is nothing without form. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#arts #believe #everything #feeling #form

It will, of course, be understood that directly or indirectly, soon or late, every advance in the sciences of human nature will contribute to our success in controlling human nature and changing it to the advantage of the common weal. ↗

— Edward Thorndike

#advantage #changing #common #contribute #controlling

Contrary to the myth that Mr. Bush cut taxes only for the wealthy, the 2001 tax cut reduced taxes for every income-tax payer in the country. ↗

— Ari Fleischer

#contrary #country #cut #every #mr

They do believe that if we do not wage this war against terror in places like Baghdad and Kabul, we are more likely to have it waged in Baltimore and Kansas. ↗

— Ed Gillespie

#baghdad #baltimore #believe #kansas #like

It is at despair at not being able to be noble and beautiful by natural means that we have made up our faces so strangely. ↗

— Charles Baudelaire

#costume #fashion #beauty

Beauty is startling. She wears a gold shawl in the summer and sells seven kinds of honey at the flea market. She is young and old at once, my daughter and my grandmother. In school she excelled in mathematics and poetry. . . Beauty will dance with anyone who is brave enough to ask her. ↗

— J. Ruth Gendler

#poetic #qualities #ruth-gendler #beauty

Il bel far niente means 'the beauty of doing nothing'... [it] has always been a cherished Italian ideal. The beauty of doing nothing is the goal of all your work, the final accomplishment for which you are most highly congratulated. The more exquisitely and delightfully you can do nothing, the higher your life's achievement. You don't necessarily need to be rich in order to experience this, either. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#spiritual #values-in-life #beauty