Beauty
The quality that pleases when seen, heard or understood, often linked to order, proportion and radiance.
Works to read
- She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron, 1814 (published 1815)
- The Critique of Judgement by Immanuel Kant, 1790 · Great Books
- Critias by Plato, c. 360 BC · Great Books
- Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov, 1898 · Great Books
- Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, 1912 · Great Books
- A Mathematician's Apology by G. H. Hardy, 1940 · Great Books
- Composed upon Westminster Bridge by William Wordsworth, 1802 (published 1807)
- Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata, 1935–1937; completed 1948
- Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats, written 1819; published 1820
- The True Story of My Life by Hans Christian Andersen, 1846
- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, 1891
- Our National Parks by John Muir, 1901
Passages
To teach is a necessity, to delight is a beauty, to persuade is a triumph
— Augustine of Hippo, On Christian Doctrine
without dowry" compensates for want of beauty, youth, birth, honour, wisdom, and probity
— Molière, The Miser and The Would-Be Gentleman
Too late loved I Thee, O Thou Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! too late I loved Thee
— Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
to take an _immediate interest_ in the Beauty of Nature (not merely to have taste in judging it) is always a mark of a good soul
— Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement
Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward man be at one
— Plato, Phaedrus and Letters VII and VIII
he must learn to recognise the beauty in the arts, sciences, virtues; then these severed and particular forms must be brought under the one principle
— Plotinus, Enneads
Passages are verified quotations from the library that use one of these words: beauty, beautiful, lovely. Sentences under “From the texts” are copied word for word from the full texts in this library. Read each in its context on the work's page.