Tao Te Ching
Beauty
The symbol of Beauty represents both out deepest delusions as well as our highest inspirations. A confused perception of beauty can lead us to the most perilous of paths to nowhere, degraded aspirations, and aggressive conflicts; but, a true experience of beauty as sacredness can launch us onto sacred journeys, meaningful livelihoods, and creative accomplishments. Seeing and understanding the differences between these two directions may be one of the most powerful influences determining the happiness and suffering in our lives.
Quotes (115)
“Ah, no wonder the men of Troy and Argives under arms have suffered years of agony all for her, for such a woman. Beauty, terrible beauty!”
“On, on! Run, dance, delirious, possessed! You, the beauty and grace of golden Tmolus... sing for joy. Like a foal with its mother at pasture, runs and leaps for joy every daughter of Bacchus.”
“If your Majesty loves beauty, let the people be able to gratify the same feeling, and what difficulty will there be in your attaining the royal sway?”
“All things are good and acceptable. That is why all things – a blade of grass or a hundred-foot pine, a leper or a legendary beauty, a national hero or a traitor – are equal in the Tao.”
“
* Trust not too much to that enchanting face;
Beauty's a charm, but soon the charm will pass.
”
“Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself, and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.”
“Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?”
“Everything has a beauty peculiar to itself; but if you put one instead of another, the most beautiful becomes ugly, because it is not in its proper place.”
“Never would the eye have perceived the sun if it had not first taken the form of the sun; likewise, every person must make themselves beautiful and divine in order to attain the sight of beauty and divinity.”
“Everyone wants precious items and beautiful women but the Sage doesn’t allow them to throw his mind into chaos.”
“The noblest functions of the human soul begin with reflecting on art and meditating on things of beauty. Rather than fixating on fame, fortune, pleasure, and power; it waits for the revelations of truth.”
“Glance at the sun. See the moon and stars. Gaze at the beauty of the green earth. Now think.”
“It was just a glance, but it became a fountain that drowned my heart... and if our joy could be worthy of that Moonlight and Sunshine, wouldn't it be for the face of that beauty?”
“Branches about to blossom or gardens strewn with faded flowers are worthier of our admiration. In all things, it is the beginnings and ends that are interesting.”
“Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.”
“A young woman is flighty, eager for many lovers; she rates her beauty beyond what the mirror shows and is proud… She know neither virtue nor intelligence and is always giddy like a leaf in the wind.”
“What benefit is beauty, the greatest blessing of heaven, if it be mixed with affectation?”
“A pretty face may be enough to catch a man, but it takes character and good nature to hold him.”
“I want you to have this: all the beauty in my eyes, and the grace of my mouth, all the splendor of my strength, all the wonder of the musk parts of my body, for are we not talking about real love, real love?”
“Grace is everything - the breath of speech, the life of talent, the soul of action... without it, beauty is lifeless.”
“Find the good in a thing at once […] amid a thousand defects, seize upon a single beauty.”
“Charm, the power of exotic beauty, fascinates and is like the flame in a fire, the light in a lamp, the luster in jewels. Commonly misunderstood as good looks, it’s much more powerful and can make the old appear young, the ugly beautiful, the dull exciting.”
“Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.”
“If you could ask a toad, 'What is beauty?', he would reply that it is a female with two big round eyes coming out of her little head”
“Beauty is a primeval phenomenon, which never makes its appearance, but the reflection of which is visible in a thousand different utterances of the creative mind and is as various as nature herself.”
“When a thief came to rob Ryokan, there was nothing to steel so Royokan offered him his clothes. When the thief slunk away, Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. ‘Poor fellow,’ he mused, ‘I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.’”
“Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”
“just as the female ant, after fecundation, loses her wings which are then a danger to the business of breeding; so, after giving birth to one or two children, a woman generally loses here beauty; probably, for similar reasons.”
“From every form the beauty slowly waned
From every firmest limb and fairest face
The strength and freshness fell like dust, and left
The action and the shape without the grace
Of life; the marble brow of youth was cleft
”
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.”
“I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.”
“Who shall be fairest? - who shall be rarest? Who shall be first in the songs that we sing? She who is kindest when fortune is blindest, Bearing through winter the blooms of the spring.”
“Such is beauty ever,—neither here nor there, now nor then,—neither in Rome nor in Athens, but wherever there is a soul to admire.”
“We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. So medicine, law, business, engineering... these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love... these are what we stay alive for.”
“The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.”
“All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.”
“Beauty—be not caused—It Is
Chase it, and it ceases
Chase it not, and it abides”
“One frequently only finds out how really beautiful a women is, until after considerable acquaintance with her.”
“Every day I discover even more beautiful things. It is intoxicating me, and I want to paint it all - my head is bursting.. ..I want to fight, scratch it off, start again, because I start to see and understand. I seems to me as if I can see nature and I can catch it all...”
“What matters poverty? What matters anything to him who is enamoured of our art? Does he not carry in himself every joy and every beauty?”
“Beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love.”
“When not directly under Greek guidance, the Roman did not perceive beauty in every-day matters, or indeed care to do so. Beauty was unimportant to him. Life in his eyes was a very serious and a very arduous business, and he had no time for what he would have thought of as a mere decoration of it.”
“Beauty? What is it but a new way of approach?... I have no need to go a mile: I have only to come up through my thicket or cross my field... I am an adventurer upon a new earth.”
“True beauty is indeed the one thing incapable of answering the expectations of an over-romantic imagination... What disappointments has it not caused since it first appeared to the mass of mankind!”
“Mathematics possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of a sculpture.”
“Truth and beauty must always be referred the one to the other. Each by itself, without the support given by the other, remains a very fluctuating value. Beauty without truth on its side would be an empty chimaera”
“Beauty sprang instantly… it was made out of ordinary things… that was the truth now. Beauty was everywhere.”
“Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.”
“She was beautiful in her ignorance, virtuous in her simplicity, and strong in her weakness. Today she has become ugly in her ingenuity, superficial and heartless in her knowledge. Will the day ever come when beauty and knowledge, ingenuity and virtue, and weakness of body and strength of spirit will be united… ?”
“I intentionally struggle to surpass the boundaries of art, and thus harmony—the essence of beauty—is distorted... I was struggling, not for beauty, but for deliverance... I wanted to be delivered from my own inner darkness and to turn it into light”
“Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive.”
“Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive.”
“Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy... a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.”
“Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain?”
“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.”
“I am not sure that I would want our sexual sensitivity to be reduced, for it is half the zest of life. Probably our sense of beauty is an offshoot of that sensibility; all other forms of beauty seem to be derived from the beauty of woman as the object of male desire and female envy”
“And do not choose a fool only because she has a pretty face. Some day he might kill a woman like that out of anger at her witlessness.”
“Beauty is worse than wine, it intoxicates both the holder and the beholder.”
“Beauty? What is it but a new way of approach?... that ardent inner curiosity which is the only true foundation for the appreciation of beauty—for beauty is inward, not outward... a flower blooms in our dooryard more wonderful that the shining heights of the Alps!”
“What makes the desert beautiful,' said the little prince, 'is that somewhere it hides a well...’”
“But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart… The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.”
“When you see a garden of flowers, remember naturally free life in harmony with Truth.”
“Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.”
“The true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human conscience.”
“Everything is beautiful. We have all this beauty in the world and all we have to do is reach out and touch it, it is all there…”
“If beauty will no longer be separable from life, then we may expect that, eventually, there will no longer be concert halls and museums, since the music and art of life will be inherent in all the sounds, movements, and patterns of ordinary life”
“The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mode but the true beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul. It is the caring that she lovingly gives the passion that she shows. The beauty of a woman grows with the passing years.”
“For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone. If you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of each of your arms.”
“what people call beautiful is really just decay… How much greater is the beauty that is underneath the surface.” 
“We are the moral inhabitants of the globe. And to deny it is to lie in prison... And unless all races and all ages of man have been totally deluded, there seems to be such a thing as grace, such a thing as beauty, such a thing as harmony — all of which are wholly free, and available to us.”
“The same qualities that make someone attractive to the opposite sex and easy to start up a new relationship make it more difficult for that relationship to last.”
“A trophy wife polishing her veneer continues a hopeless path toward obsolescence.”
“Cosmetics is a boon to every woman, but a girl's best beauty aid is still a near-sighted man.”
“When we see things as they are, they make sense to us: the way leaves move when they are blown by the wind, the way rocks get wet when there are snowflakes sitting on them. We see how things display their harmony and their chaos at the same time. So we are never limited by beauty alone, but we appreciate all sides of reality properly.”
“A pretty face may last a year or two; but pretty soon they’ll see what you can do.”
“when we try to grasp anything, it vanishes... there's nothing there, and the nothing is beautiful”
“The highways of American cities are an enduring testimony to our acceptance of ugliness”
“There are different levels of beauty… some are popular and ordinary, and thus of brief value, and others are difficult and rare, and hence worth pursuing.”
“The sense of beauty feels more like something the mind just naturally relaxes into when the preoccupation with self subsides.”
“Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.”
“When struck by the desire arrow, all our common sense… go out the window, we… might even find a streetwalking hippopotamus sexy, even as a beautiful girl loyally waits at home.”
“No matter who you are, no matter where you come from, you are beautiful.”
“beauty is something to be found rather than passively encountered, it requires us to pick up on certain details, to identify the whiteness of a cotton dress, the reflection of the sea... Chardin opens our eyes to the beauty of salt cellars, Elstir paints nothing grander than cotton dresses and harbors”
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