Quotes about Beauty

The fact is that the beautiful, humanly speaking, is merely form considered in its simplest aspect, in its most perfect symmetry, in its most entire harmony with our make-up. Thus the ensemble that it offers us is always complete, but restricted like ourselves. What we call the ugly, on the contrary, is a detail of a great whole which eludes us, and which is in harmony, not with man but with all creation. That is why it constantly presents itself to us in new but incomplete aspects.

Il y a des illusions touchantes qui sont peut-être des réalités sublimes.

The most beautiful of altars, he said, is the soul of an unhappy creature consoled and thanking God.

Or, donner la grosse cloche en mariage à Quasimodo, c'était donner Juliette à Roméo.

The prosperity of right is that it is always beautiful and pure.

exquisite--such was Fantine; and beneath these feminine adornments and these ribbons one could divine a statue, and in that statue a soul.

He fell to the seat, she by his side. There no more words. The stars were beginning to shine. How was it that their lips met? How is it that the birds sing, the the snow melts, that the rose opens, that May blooms, that the dawn whitens behind the black trees on the shivering summit of the hills?

Sometimes, beautiful as Cosette was, Marius shut his eyes in her presence. The best way to look at the soul is through closed eyes.

The beautiful is just as useful as the useful.

War has frightful beauties which we have not concealed; it has also, we acknowledge, some hideous features. One of the most surprising is the prompt stripping of the bodies of the dead after the victory. The dawn which follows a battle always rises on naked corpses.

It was like a hand which had opened and thrown suddenly upon her a handful of sunbeams.

In the case of sand as in that of woman, there is a fineness which is treacherous.