#beauty

I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough, To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough, To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough, To pass among them, or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment—what is this, then? I do not ask any more delight—I swim in it, as in a sea. ↗

— Walt Whitman

#beauty

Criticism is an act of love. We can never learn those people we love, but we can learn about them in such ways as to perceive more clearly that unfathomable, mysterious core that is the source of their beauty. ↗

— Richard L. McGuire

#love #beauty

The beauty of the ultrasound scan is something that only parents can appreciate, but Emma had seen these things before and knew what was required of her. ‘Beautiful,’ she sighed, though in truth it could have been a Polaroid of the inside of his pocket. ↗

— David Nicholls

#beauty

I ran a constant low fever waiting for my ride to come and take me away to something finer. I lay in bed at night, watching the red beacon on top of the water tower, a clear signal to me of the beauty and mystery of a life that waited for me far away, and thought of Housman's poem, "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom upon the bough. It stands among the woodland ride, Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my three-score years and ten, Twenty will not come again..." and would have run away to where people would appreciate me, had I known of such a place, had I thought my parents would understand. But if I had said, "Along the woodland I must go to see the cherry hung with snow," they would have said, "Oh,no, you don't. You're going to stay right here and finish up what I told you to do three hours ago. Besides, those aren't cherry trees, those are crab apples. ↗

— Garrison Keillor

#childhood #garrison-keillor #growing-up #lake-wobegon-days #beauty

I prefer the saddle to the streetcar and star-sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail leading into the unknown to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bread by cities... it is enough that I am surrounded by beauty. ↗

— Everett Ruess

#nature #solitude #beauty

Men call you fayre, and you doe credit it, For that your self ye daily such doe see: But the trew fayre, that is the gentle wit, And vertuous mind, is much more praysd of me. For all the rest, how ever fayre it be, Shall turne to nought and loose that glorious hew: But onely that is permanent and free From frayle corruption, that doth flesh ensew. That is true beautie: that doth argue you To be divine and borne of heavenly seed: Deriv'd from that fayre Spirit, from whom al true And perfect beauty did at first proceed. He onely fayre, and what he fayre hath made, All other fayre lyke flowres untymely fade. ↗

— Edmund Spenser

#british-literature #edmund-spenser #poetry #sonnet #beauty

And there was a beautiful view, But nobody could see. 'Cause everyone in the Island was saiyng, Look at me! Look at me! ↗

— Laurie Anderson

#beauty

If a rainbow makes a sound, or a flower as it grows, that was the sound of her laughter. ↗

— Wm. Paul Young

#laughter #love #beauty

To my taste, the men in Rome are ridiculously, hurtfully, stupidly beautiful. More beautiful even than Roman women, to be honest. Italian men are beautiful in the same way as French women, which is to say-- no detail spared in the quest for perfection. They’re like show poodles. Sometimes they look so good I want to applaud. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#beauty

Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life. ↗

— Kakuzō Okakura

#tea #teaism #beauty