This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Many have no happier moments than those that they pass in solitude, abandoned to their imagination, which sometimes puts scepters in their hands or miters on their heads, shifts the scene of pleasure with endless variety, bids all the forms of beauty sparkle before them, and gluts them with every change of visionary luxury." -
"I am happy in having learned to distinguish between ownership and possession. Books, pictures, and all the beauty of the world belong to those who love and understand them - not usually to those who possess them. All of these things that I am entitled to have I have - I own by divine right. So I care not a bit who possesses them." -
"I who am blind can give one hint to those who see - one admonition to those who would make full use of the gift of sight: Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be stricken blind. And the same method can be applied to the other senses. Hear the music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if you would be stricken deaf tomorrow. Touch each object yhou want to touch as if tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again. Make the most of every sense; glory in all facets of pleasure and beauty which the world reveals to you through the several means of contact which Nature provides. But of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful." -
"Make a rule, and pray to God to help you to keep it, never, if possible, to lie down at night without being able to say: "I have made one human being at least a little wiser, or a little happier, or at least a little better this day."" - Charles Kingsley
"It is the qualities of the heart, not those of the face, that should attract us in women, because the former are durable, the latter transitory. So lovable women, like roses, retain their sweetness long after they have lost their beauty." - Alphonse de Lamartine, fully Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine
"The grandeur of natural order, man's pursuit of truth, his appreciation of beauty, his drive toward justice and holiness - it is all one... One God, one Mind, one Will, one Beauty, one Love." - Morris S. Lazaron, fully Morris Samuel Lazaron
"To realize in its completeness the universal beauty and perfection of the works of God, we must recognize a certain perpetual and very free progress of the whole universe, such that it is always going forward to greater improvement... Although many substances have already attained a great perfection, yet on account of the infinite divisibility of the continuous, there always remain in the abyss of things slumbering parts which have yet to be awakened, to grow in size and worth, and, in a word, to advance to a more perfect state. And hence no end of progress is ever reached." - Gottfried Leibniz, fully Gottfried Wilhalm von Leibniz, Baron von Leibnitz
"Poetry is something to make us wiser and better, by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth which God has set in all men's souls." - James Russell Lowell
"Knowledge is all-knowing, understanding, forgiving; it takes up no position, sets no store by form. It has compassion with the abyss - it is the abyss. So we reject it, firmly, and henceforward our concern shall be with beauty only. And by beauty we mean simplicity, largeness, and renewed severity of discipline; we mean a return to detachment and to form." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
"This divination of the spiritual in the things of sense, and which expresses itself I the things of sense, is precisely what we call Poetry. Metaphysics too pursues a spiritual prey, but in a very different formal object. Whereas metaphysics stands in the line of knowledge and of the contemplation of truth, poetry stands in the line of making and of the delight procured by beauty. The difference is an all-important one, and one that it would be harmful to disregard. Metaphysics snatches at the spiritual in an idea, by the most abstract intellection; poetry reaches it in the flesh, by the very point of the sense sharpened through intelligence... Metaphysics gives chase to essences and definitions, poetry to any flash of existence glittering by the way, and any reflection of an invisible order. Metaphysics isolates mystery in order to know it; poetry, thanks to the balances it constructs, handles and utilizes mystery as an unknown force." - Jacques Maritain
"The truth and rapture of man are holy things, not lightly to be scorned. A carelessness of life an beauty mark the glutton, the idler, and the fool in their deadly path across history." - John Masefield
"Beauty is the first present Nature gives to women, and the first it takes away." - George Brossin Méré, chevalier de
"Beauty does not lie in the face. It lies in the harmony between man and his industry. Beauty is expression. When I paint a mother I try to render her beautiful by the mere look she gives her child." - Kate Millet, Katherine Murray Millett
"I believe the recipe for happiness to be just enough money to pay the monthly bills you acquire, a little surplus to give you confidence, a little too much work each day, enthusiasm for your work, a substantial share of good health, a couple of real friends, and a wife and children to share life's beauty with you." - John Morley, 1st Viscount Morely of Blackburn, Lord Morley
"We cannot tell what may happen to us in the strange medley of life. But we can decide what happens in us - how we take it, what we do with it - and that is what really counts in the end. How to take the raw stuff of life and make it a thing of worth and beauty - that is the test of living." - Joseph Fort Newton
"Some things cannot be measured - we do not think a ton of truth, a bushel of beauty or an inspiration a mile long." - Joseph Fort Newton
"Science will never be able to reduce the value of a sunset to arithmetic. Nor can it reduce friendship to a formula. Laughter and love, pain and loneliness, the challenge of accomplishment in living, and the depth of insight into beauty and truth: these will always surpass the scientific mastery of nature." - Louis Orr
"Nature I believe in. True art aims to represent men and women, not as my little self would have them, but as they appear. My heroes and heroines I want not extreme types, all good or all bad; but human, mortal—partly good, partly bad. Realism I need. Pure mental abstractions have no significance for me. " - Ouida, pseudonym of Maria Louise Ramé, preferred to be called Marie Louise de la Ramée NULL
"The books which help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is by easy reading: but a great book that comes from a great thinker - it is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and with beauty." - Joseph Parker
"The books which help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is by easy reading. But a great book that comes from a great thinker - it is a ship of thought, deep-freighted with truth and with beauty." - Theodore Parker
"There is no worth nor beauty but in the mind's idea." - Thomas Love Peacock
"Love is indeed Heaven upon Earth; since Heaven above would not be Heaven without it: For where there is not Love; there is Fear: But perfect Love casts out Fear. And yet we naturally fear most to offend what we most Love. What we Love, we'll Hear; what we Love, we'll Trust; and what we Love, we'll serve, ay, and suffer for too. If you love me (says our Blessed Redeemer) keep my Commandments. Why? Why then he'll Love us; then we shall be his Friends; then he'll send us the Comforter; then whatsover we ask, we shall receive; and then where he is we shall be also, and that forever. Behold the Fruits of Love; the Power, Vertue, Benefit and Beauty of Love! Love is above all; and when it prevails in us all, we shall all be Lovely, and in Love with God and one with another. " - William Penn
"Beauty and ugliness disappear equally under the wrinkles of age; one is lost in them; the other hidden." - Jean-Antoine Petit-Senn
"Academic training in beauty is a sham." - Pablo Picasso, fully Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso
"Beauty is rather a light that plays over the symmetry of things than that symmetry itself." - Plotinus NULL
"Beauty of form affects the mind, but then it must not be the mere shell that we admire, but the thought that this shell is only the beautiful case adjusted to the shape and value of a still more beautiful pearl within. The perfection of outward loveliness is the soul shining through its crystalline covering." - Jane Porter
"The platform of the altar of love may be analyzed and explained; it is constructed of virtue, beauty, and affection. Such is the pyre, such is the offering; but the eternal spark must come from heaven, that lights the sacrifice." - Jane Porter
"Beauty that is only skin deep must fade like the gowans of May." - Andrew Ramsay, fully Sir Andrew Ramsay, Lord Abbotshall, 1st Baronet
"Beauty is power; a smile is its sword." - Charles Reade
"Music is the heartbeat of the universe. It reaches into the outer ramparts of eternity where time and space are nonexistent; it touches the stars and is reflected in the beauty of the galaxy. It is exemplified in the mathematical precision found in the largest star and the tiniest molecule. Music is emotional. It touches the heart and creates a response within the listener without his being aware of the technique." - John Rossel
"If we recognize love, it is by its beauty. If we recognize truth, it is by its beauty. The meaning of life is beauty. When we sense and experience beauty, we are looking straight into the face of the Creator. We achieve transcendent union with the mind of God. We were born to be aware of it and to create more of it." - Todd Rundgren, fully Todd Harry Rundgren
"Happily there exists more than one kind of beauty. There is the beauty of infancy, the beauty of youth, the beauty of maturity, and, believe me, ladies and gentlemen, the beauty of age." - George Augustus Sala, fully George Augustus Henry Sala
"Our hope lies in the conviction that we are living and dying for love. The beauty is in the journey itself, the journey of love." - Shantananda Saraswathi, fully Swami Shantananda Saraswathi, born Chandrashekar
"True beauty is in the mind; and the expression of the features depends more upon the moral nature than most persons are accustomed to think." - Frederic Saunders
"Whatever of goodness emanates from the soul, gathers its soft halo in the eyes; an if the heart be a lurking-place of crime, the eyes are sure to betray the secret. A beautiful eye makes silence eloquent, a kind eye makes contradiction assent, an enraged eye makes beauty a deformity; so you see, forsooth, the little organ plays no inconsiderable, if not a dominant, part." - Frederic Saunders
"Energy is never created or destroyed. When one thing dies, life is that energy, the soul, that is transformed into another form... I believe everything’s a mess and our job is to create a form of harmony, a mixture of beauty and love. The more man gives love, the more he grows, the more love he has to give." - Nabil Sawalha
"It is only through the morning gate of the beautiful that you can penetrate into the realm of knowledge. That which we feel here as beauty we shall one day know as truth." - Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
"The artist is content with aspiration, whereas the mediocre must have beauty. And yet the artist attains beauty without willing it, for he is only striving after truthfulness." - Arnold Schoenberg
"The most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth." - Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury
"Beauty comes, we scarce know how, as an emanation from sources deeper than itself." - John Campbell Shairp
"Health is beauty, and the most perfect health is the most perfect beauty." - William Shenstone
"Our purpose is to live in harmony with those cycles [birth, growth, death and regeneration] to develop our peculiar organs of consciousness and creativity to add to the beauty, love, humor, diversity and general interest of the world." - Starhawk, born Miriam Simos NULL
"To give pain is the tyranny - to make happy the true empire of beauty." - Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele