#pre

Unfortunately, these days, 'literary' writing seems to have become synonymous with 'showy' writing, writing that is beautiful but doesn't tell a story. This is a misguided trend. If today's 'literary' writers would look back only one or two hundred years at real literary writers like Dostoyevsky, Poe, Conrad, Melville, they would find momentous stories--not just pretty writing--at the core of almost all of their great works. ↗

— Noah Lukeman

#literary-writing #pretty-writing #beauty

...listening with absorbed attention more to her voice than to what she was saying, and thinking how like she was, flowering through her voice into beauty in the darkness, to some butterflies he had come across in the Swiss mountains the summer before. When they were folded up they were grey, mothlike creatures that one might easily overlook, but directly they opened their wings they became the loveliest things in the world, all rose-colour or heavenly blue. So had she been to him in the daylight that afternoon,--an ordinary woman, not in any way noticeable; but now listen to her, opening into beauty on the wings of her voice! ↗

— Elizabeth von Arnim

#butterflies #hidden-beauty #voice #beauty

What is it?" She hissed through clenched teeth. "What's wrong?" He bent down toward her. "I was just thinking how beautiful you looked." The punch was impressive, both accurate and strong. Jette's fist caught her husband squarely on the jaw. It was an absolute peach of a shot, and it propelled him backward into the chest of drawers. ↗

— Alex George

#pregnancy #beauty

Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine. ↗

— Nikola Tesla

#according #each #evaluate #future #his

There's this expression called postmodernism, which is kind of silly, and destroys a perfectly good word called modern, which now no longer means anything. ↗

— Twyla Tharp

#called #destroys #expression #good #kind

ANOTHER TWILIGHT Allow the point of the Croccodrillo its hazy cypress trees in profile Like a rough sketch for the Isle of the Dead, as seen from yellow stucco, his Villa Igea where Lawrence finished "Sons and Lovers," wild thyme scenting olive-grove grass, crime scenery come back to more than once. Again you're mirrored in lake shadow, a white sail flaking on its turquoise wavelets, keep awake by traffic noise Along the Gardesana...and you know that this beauty's unbearable as before even if seen from its opposite shore. ↗

— Peter Robinson

#the-new-yorker #beauty

Be real. Embrace that you have weakness. Because everyone does. Embrace that your body is not perfect. Because nobody’s is. Embrace that you have things you can’t control. We all have a list of them. ↗

— Dan Pearce

#pressure #self-awareness #self-esteem #self-realization #society-beauty

Every bride is beautiful. It’s like newborn babies or puppies. They can’t help it. ↗

— Emme Rollins

#beauty #bride #brides #cute #newborns

There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, and not a grain more. ... A man sees only what concerns him. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#beauty #blindness #beauty

I would inevitably get the girls who were interested in me because I was the guy from E.T. It was kind of tough. I can't deny ever capitalizing upon it but on the whole in my teens I was pretty virtuous. ↗

— Henry Thomas

#deny #ever #get #guy #i