Beauty

It is better to be beautiful than to be good.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the colour purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

If landscapes were sold, like the sheets of characters of my boyhood, one penny plain and twopence coloured, I should go the length of twopence every day of my life.

I do not know which to prefer,

Beauty is momentary in the mind—

Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!

That orbèd maiden, with white fire laden,

He is a portion of the loveliness

A pardlike Spirit, beautiful and swift.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

If thou would’st view fair Melrose aright,

Just as the sweet-apple reddens on the high branch, high on the highest, and the apple-pickers missed it, or rather did not miss it out, but could not reach it.

Some say an army of cavalry or of infantry or a fleet of ships is the most beautiful thing on the black earth. But I say it is whatever one loves.

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.

Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle,

Fair tresses man’s imperial race insnare,

Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay.

True wit is Nature to advantage dressed,

Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

Pretty! in amber to observe the forms

Where’s the man could ease a heart like a satin gown?

Believe me, if all those endearing young charms,

on being asked what she wore in bed: Chanel No. 5.

O fairest of creation, last and best