#be

Why did people assume that the beautiful among them needed nothing but their beauty to bring them happiness? That behind the beauty there was nothing but an empty shell, insensitive shell? ↗

— Mary Balogh

#shell #beauty

Though beauty is autonomous, there seem to be occasions when human presence can become congruent with her will. In creative work no amount of force or mechanical management can guarantee beauty. Suddenly, without expecting it, beauty is there. Yet ultimately beauty is a profound illumination of presence, a stirring of the invisible in visible form and in order to receive this we need to cultivate a new style of approaching the world. ↗

— John O'Donohue

#beauty

The blue, mosquitoey night pushes in from the hotel windows. ↗

— Jennifer Egan

#beauty

O, lack and doubt and fear can only come Because of plenty, confidence, and love! They are the shadow-forms about their feet, Because they are not perfect crystal-clear To the all-searching sun in which they live. Dread of its loss is Beauty’s certain seal! ↗

— George MacDonald

#virtue #weakness #beauty

The time of the autumn floods came and the hundred streams poured into the Yellow River. … Then the Lord of the River was beside himself with Joy, believing that all the beauty in the world belonged to him alone. ↗

— Zhuangzi

#beauty

a single-file army of ants biting a mammoth tree into uniform grains and hauling it down to the dark for their ravenous queen. and, in reply, a choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. this forest eats itself and lives forever. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#forest #nature #beauty

You were all given the same chance. This day was your test.... I was watching to see what you would do. I need someone who can wait with patience, and yet know when it is time to act without fear. Someone who is able to see patterns even when none may be obvious. Someone who can express his own artistic viewpoint.... I want someone who will leave the world a more beautiful place than he found it. ↗

— Lisa Magnum

#beauty

It is untrue that fiction is nonutilitarian. The uses of fiction are synonymous with the uses of literature. They include refreshment, clarification of life, self-awareness, expansion of our range of experiences, and enlargement of our sense of understanding and discovery, perception, intensification, expression, beauty , and understanding. Like literature generally, fiction is a form of discovery, perception, intensification, expression, beauty, and understanding. If it is all these things, the question of whether it is a legitimate use of time should not even arise. ↗

— Leland Ryken

#classics #fiction #literature #novels #on-fiction

Bathsheba looked at Benedict. "You never told me they were matchmaking." "He didn't notice!" said his father before Benedict could answer. "He didn't notice handsome young misses of unexceptionable family. He didn't notice beautiful heiresses. We tried bluestockings. We tried country girls. We tried everything. He didn't notice! But Bathsheba Winngate, the most notorious woman in all of England, he noticed." "We notorious women tend to stand out," she said. ↗

— Loretta Chase

#beauty

There is great worth in holding universal truths and timelessly beautiful words in your heart, which will stay there forever, infusing your thoughts and speech… ↗

— Dan Stevens

#inspirational #quotes #speech #thoughts #truths