#ugliness

Ah, God, what an ugly city Ilium is! 'Ah, God,' says Bokonon, 'what an ugly city every city is!' Sleet was falling through a motionless blanket of smog. It was early morning. I was riding in the Lincoln sedan of Dr. Asa Breed. I was vaguely ill, still a little drunk from the night before. Dr. Breed was driving. Tracks of a long-abandoned trolley system kept catching the wheels of his car. Breed was a pink old man, very prosperous, beautifully dressed. His manner was civilized, optimistic, capable. I, by contrast, felt bristly, diseased, cynical. I had spent the night with Sandra. My soul seemed as foul as smoke from burning cat fur. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#beauty

Isn’t that the way God works? She’d thought. He takes the things in our lives that are ugly, disgusting, and downright wicked, and transforms them into something magnificent. ↗

— J.E.B. Spredemann

#god #grace #mercy #transformation #ugliness

What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness. ↗

— Joseph Brodsky

#beauty #cities #everything #i #king

I was amazed and upset by the looks I got just walking around the studio... It illuminates the ugliness and the beauty that exists within each of us, and that's what this story represents to me. ↗

— Gerard Butler

#around #beauty #each #exists #got

Secrets are generally terrible. Beauty is not hidden--only ugliness and deformity. ↗

— L.M. Montgomery

#deformity #secrets #ugliness #beauty