Great Throughts Treasury

"Unity and simplicity are the two true sources of beauty. Supreme beauty resides in God."

"Accuracy of eye consists in noticing the true form and magnitude of the objects, and the form involves both color and figure."

"All virtue is in some measure weakened by other proclivities and in some measure capable of false pretenses; a friendship that extends to the outer limits of humanity bursts forth with violence and is the highest virtue now unknown to mortals, and is thus also the greatest good they can possess. Christian morality does not teach this; the heathens, however, prayed to it, and the greatest deeds of antiquity were accomplished through it."

"All violent sentiments go beyond the mediate to the immediate, since feeling, in contrast, should be aroused in the way a beautiful day comes to be - through the announcement of a lovely dawn."

"At the same time art weeps with me: for the work, which art could oppose to the greatest inventions of wit and contemplation, and by means of which art could still yet raise its head as in its golden era, to the greatest height of human admiration; this work, which is perhaps the last one to which art applied its utmost powers, it must see half annihilated and cruelly mishandled. Who here does not take to the heart the loss of so many hundreds of masterpieces!"

"But the beauty of art demands a higher sensibility than the beauty of nature, because the beauty of art, like tears shed at a play, gives no pain, is without life and must be awakened and repaired by culture."

"As in a rising motion of the sea the previous still surface swells into a lovely tumult with playful waves, where one is swallowed by the other and is again rolled out from the very same wave, here, just as softly swollen and drawn in suspension, one muscle flows into the other, and a third, which raises itself between them and seems to strengthen their motion, loses itself in the latter, and our glance is, as it were, likewise swallowed."

"By means of a secret art, however, the mind is led through all of the deeds of his strength up to the perfection of his soul, and in this work there is only monument to this very soul which no poet erects who sings only of the strength of his arms: the artist has surpassed it. His image of the hero gives no place to thoughts of violence and unruly love."

"As it is confessedly the beauty of man which is to be conceived under one general idea, so I have noticed that those who are observant of beauty only in women, and are moved little or not at all by the beauty of men, seldom have an impartial, vital, inborn instinct for beauty in art."

"Ask those who are familiar with what is most beautiful in the nature of mortals whether or not they have seen a flank which may be compared with the left one. The action and reaction of its muscles has been wonderfully weighed out with a wise measure of alternating motion and quick force, and the body must have been capable by the same means for all that it was intended to accomplish."

"As a solicitous mother inconsolably mourns her beloved child, so, my sweet friend, I deplore our separation with all my heart... My beloved and very beautiful friend, no name by which I might call you would be sweet enough or sufficient for my love; all that I could say would be far too feeble to give utterance to my heart and soul. Truly friendship came from heaven and was not created by mere human impulses... My one friend, I love you more than any living thing, and time nor chance nor age can ever lessen this love."

"For the contemplation of works of art, as Pliny says, is for idle people, that is, those who are not condemned to till a hard and barren field all day long."

"Even if the beautiful in art were nothing but visage, as, according to the Egyptians, God is nothing but eye, it would still not excite many people were the beautiful united in a single element."

"Color contributes to beauty, but it is not beauty. Color should have a minor part in the consideration of beauty, because it is not color but the structure that constitutes its essence."

"Friendship without love is only acquaintance. The other, however, is heroic and sublime above all else; it humiliates the willing friend till he grovels in the dust and it drives him to the day of his death."

"Grace can never properly be said to exist without beauty; for it is only in the elegant proportions of beautiful forms that can be found that harmonious variety of line and motion which is the essence and charm of grace."

"Heaven has given all rational creatures the capacity for the sentiment for the beautiful, but in very different degrees."

"I am desolate and my only consolation is that there must be something in me that binds me so firmly to you. That must be the only thing in me that is exceptional. I shall love you as long as I live and even as I expire."

"From the first moment an indescribable attraction towards you, excited by something more than form and feature, caused me to catch an echo of that harmony which passes human understanding and which is the music of the everlasting concord of things... It is from you yourself that the subject is taken. Our intercourse has been short, too short both for you and me; but I was aware of the deep consent of our spirits, the instant I saw you. Your culture proved that my hope was not groundless; and I found in a beautiful body a soul created for nobleness, gifted with the sense of beauty. My parting from you was, therefore, one of the most painful in my life; and that this feeling continues our common friend is witness, for your separation from me leaves me no hope of seeing you again. Let this essay be a memorial of our friendship, which, on my side, is free from every selfish motive, and ever remains subject and dedicate to yourself alone."

"I can be satisfied with my life. I have no worries other than my work, and have even found someone with whom I can speak of love: a good-looking, blond young Roman of sixteen, half a head taller than I am; but I only see him once a week, when he dines with me on Sunday evening... Compared to Rome, all else is nothing. You don't know half of it."

"From the moment I first saw you I was unaccountably drawn to you, not solely to your outward appearance, and this gave me a feeling of the harmony that is beyond human comprehension and which is struck up by the eternal affinity of things. In the 40 years of my life this is the second time this has happened to me, and it will presumably be the last. My dear friend, no one else in the world can love you so: for such a complete accord of souls is only possible between two; all other inclinations are only branches off this noble main stem."

"If it seems incomprehensible to locate a thinking power in some part of the body besides the head, then one learns here how the hands of a creative master is capable of animating matter."

"I was delighted when I looked at this body from behind, just like a person who, after admiring the might entrance to a temple, is led to the top, where its vault, which he cannot avoid seeing, astounds him once again."

"In the peace and quiet of the body is revealed a calm, great spirit: the man who has become an example of great virtue to the poets, who exposed himself to the greatest danger from love of justice, who brought security to the nations and peace to the inhabitants. This excellent and noble form of such a perfect nature is, as it were, enveloped in immortality, and figure is merely like its vessel: a loftier spirit seems to have taken the place of the mortal parts and to have spread itself in their stead. It is no longer the body which has hitherto had to contend with the monsters and disturbers of peace; it is that body which has been purged on Mount Oeta of the dross of humanity which separated it from the source of its similarity to the father of the gods."

"It is a small thing to me to let other affections go or, not to be fickle, to set a much lower value on them, for I have made the biggest mistake in love. I am now lucky in love. My eyes weep only for you. I am in a state not unlike that of Diogenes as described by Lucian, utterly alone, an enemy of the people, without friends or company. My spirit breaks its bounds when I think of you, as was said by Plato to Dion. You ask to see me: but I cannot."

"Moreover, since human beauty, in order to be known, is to be grasped in a general concept, I have noticed that those who attend only to the beauties of the female sex, and are touched little or not at all by the beauties in our sex, possess the sentiment for the beautiful in art, but little in an innate, general or lively fashion."

"Now I recognize the power of love. But perhaps no one can any longer love a friend with such sincerity and yearning. My fate, however, has declared itself against me quite, it will tear me away or else torment me with a futile delay. If only it could give me the disposition of the unfeeling stoics! I shall love you without hope."

"Now, as the spirit of culture is much more ardent in youth than in manhood, the instinct of which I am speaking must be exercised and directed to what is beautiful, before that age is reached at which one would be afraid to confess that one had no taste for it."

"Parting from you, therefore, was one of the most painful farewells of my life; and our mutual friend is a witness thereof - even after your departure - for your remoteness under a distant sky, leaves me no hope of seeing you again. Let this essay be a monument of our friendship, which, for my part, is free of all ulterior motives and remains faithfully maintained and dedicated to you."

"The genius of our friendship will follow you from a distance as far as Paris, and will there leave you in the abode of foolish pleasures; here, however, your image will be that of my saint."

"The inner sense must be ready and quick, because first impressions are the strongest ones and precede reflection: what we sense by means of reflection is weaker."

"The beautiful and the mediocre are equally welcome to those people as people of standing and the rabble are welcome to a person of indiscriminate courtesy."

"The artist must conceive with warmth yet execute with coolness."

"The capacity to sense the beautiful in art is a conception which simultaneously comprises the person and the object, the container and that which is contained, but which I form into one thing so that here I chiefly have the former in view and for the present note that the beautiful is more extensive than beauty: the latter properly contains form, and is the highest end of art; the former ranges over all that is thought, designed and worked out."

"The true feeling for the beautiful is like liquid plaster which poured over the head of Apollo, and which touches and surrounds it in all its parts."

"The only way for us to become great or even inimitable if possible, is to imitate the Greeks."

"The object of this feeling is not what impulse, friendship and kindness praise, but rather what the inner, more delicate sense feels, which should be purified of all purposes for the sake of the beautiful."

"There is nothing more sensitive than trying to deny someone good taste, which means, in other words, just this capacity; one sooner admits lacking all kinds of knowledge than hear the reproach of being incapable of knowledge of the beautiful. One confesses, if need be, to experience in this knowledge, but one will affirm the capacity for it."

"This accuracy of eye, however, is an endowment which may lack like a delicate eye and a sensitive sense of smell."

"Unity and simplicity are the two true sources of beauty. Supreme beauty resides in God."

"Where this sentiment does not exist, one preaches knowledge of the beautiful to the blind, just as one preaches music to an unmusical ear."

"What words of affection shall I use to answer your charming lines? Ad os oppressi et ad pectus. [How I have pressed them to lips and breast.] If only you could see what is going on in my soul! My very dearest brother, if life and honor were at stake, my heart would sacrifice them for your sake. Such friends as you should be displayed to the world as models. Heaven should repay us for our honesty. But who would bewail my fate? It has put my soul into such a state that it is not at peace without the charms of an invaluable friend (if I could only embrace him) yet keeps me apart from him. To me all is lost, honour and pleasure, peace and quiet, unless I see you and enjoy you."

"Violent sentiment is also detrimental to the consideration and enjoyment of the beautiful, because it is too short: for it leads all at once to what should be felt in stages."