We do not arrive at the sublime by degrees, for infinite distances separate it even from the beautiful.[Alternate translation:]You do not reach the sublime by degrees; the distance between it and the merely beautiful is infinite.[On n’arrive point au sublime par degrés; des distances infinies le séparent même de ce qui n’est que beau.]
To love beauty is to see light.[Aimer la beauté, c’est voir la lumière.]
To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.
To constitute taste, it is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.[Il ne suffit pas, pour le goût, de voir, de connaître la beauté d’un ouvrage : il faut la sentir, en être touché.]
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
Those happy smilets, that played on her ripe lip, seemed not to know what guests were in her eyes; which parted thence, as pearls from diamonds dropped.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.
There was never yet fair woman, but she made mouths in a glass.
There is no exquisite beauty, without some strangeness in the proportion.
The way I see it, there is no greater spiritual beauty than fanaticism, of a sort so sincere it can only end in martyrdom.
The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.
