beauty 2 - beauty 3
beauty 4 - beauty 5

   

Things are beautiful
if you love them.

Jean Anouilh

   
As I experience it, appreciation of beauty is access to the soul.  With beauty in our lives, we walk and carry ourselves more lightly and with a different look in our eyes.  To look into the eyes of someone beholding beauty is to look through the windows of the soul.  Any time we catch a glimpse of soul, beauty is there; any time we catch our breath and feel "How beautiful!," the soul is present.

Jean Shinoda Bolen

      
How much beauty goes unnoticed as we hurry from place to place during the course of our busy days?  How many flowers and trees do we go by without noticing their colors or their marvelous complexity or their scents?  How many rainbows go unseen by how many people because we close ourselves up indoors when it rains to "protect" ourselves from the elements?  How many snowfalls go unenjoyed because it's too cold outside or we don't want to bother to put on our gloves and coats and boots and hats to keep us warm and dry?

tom walsh
  

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm.  Philosophies fall away like sand, and creeds follow one  another like the withered leaves of Autumn; but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons and a possession for all eternity.

Oscar Wilde

   

Everyone wants to understand art.   Why not try to understand the song of a bird?  Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them?

Pablo Picasso

   

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development,
invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.


Edgar Allen Poe

   

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Tell me, can you see beauty?  Can you let it renew your commitment
to life, every day?  I don't want to wait for death to be near to receive
the beauty in my life.  I want to be awed every day by the truth--pretty
or painful--and let it open me to the beauty that surrounds me
and draws me deeper and deeper into my own life.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

  

Is it wholly fantastic to admit the possibility that Nature herself
strove toward what we call beauty?  Face to face with any one of
the elaborate flowers which the human's cultivation has had nothing
to do with, it does not seem fantastic to me.  We put survival first.  But
when we have a margin of safety left over, we expend it in the search
for the beautiful.  Who can say that Nature does not do the same?

Joseph Wood Krutch

  

What a strange power the perception of beauty is!  It seems
to ebb and flow like some secret tide, independent alike
of health and disease, of joy or sorrow.  There are times
in our lives when we seem to go singing on our way,
and when the beauty of the world sets itself like
a quiet harmony to the song we uplift.

A.C. Benson

  

The beauty that addresses itself to the eyes is only the spell
of the moment; the eye of the body is not always that of the soul.

George Sand

   

Beauty does not lie in the face.  It lies in the harmony between
a person and his or her industry.  Beauty is expression.
When I paint a mother I try to render her beautiful
by the mere look she gives her child.

Jean Francois Millet

  

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

John Keats

beauty 2 - beauty 3
beauty 4 - beauty 5

  

When I am working on a problem,
I never think about beauty.
I only think about how to solve the
problem.  But when I have finished,
if the solution is not beautiful,
I know it is wrong.

R. Buckminster Fuller

  

  

We ascribe beauty to that which is simple;
which has no superfluous parts; which exactly
answers its end; which stands related to all things;
which is the mean of many extremes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

  

Beauty is God's handwriting.

Charles Kingsley

   

There's nothing fair nor beautiful, but takes
Something from thee, that makes it beautiful.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  

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The purpose of creation is beauty.  Nature in all its various aspects
develops towards beauty, and therefore it is plain that the purpose
of life is to evolve towards beauty.

Hazrat Inayat Khan

   

We are conscious of beauty when there is a harmonious relationship between
something in our nature and the quality of the object which delights us.

Blaise Pascal

  

We are all that we need to be today, at this moment.  And we
have an inner beauty, each of us, that is our real blessing in the
lives of others.  Our inner beauty will shine forth if we invite it to
do so.  Whatever our outer appearance, it doesn't gently touch
or bring relief where suffering is--like our words which come from
the heart, the home of our inner beauty. . . . It's our inner beauty
that is valued by others.  The surprise in store for each of us is
discovering that the glow of our inner beauty transforms
our outer appearance, too.

Karen Casey
Each Day a New Beginning

  

beauty 2 - beauty 3
beauty 4 - beauty 5

I have consciously sought after those things which make for value, order, richness, spirit and wonder, even though I am often unable to verbalize what I feel when I perceive something beautiful.  Sometimes it's a pang or a sensation; at other times it is an awareness of joy and security or pure pleasure.  In any event, it is a moment to be celebrated.  Beauty justifies itself.  The fact that it is beyond definition means nothing.

Luci Swindoll

   

  

I think of when I was in high school in the 1940s:  the white girls got
their hair crinkled up by chemicals and heat so it would curl, and the
black girls got their hair mashed flat by chemicals and heat so it
wouldn’t curl.  Home perms hadn’t been invented yet, and a lot of kids
couldn’t afford these expensive treatments, so they were wretched
because they couldn’t follow the rules, the rules of beauty.
 
Beauty always has rules.  It’s a game.  I resent the beauty game when
I see it controlled by people who grab fortunes from it and don’t care
who they hurt.  I hate it when I see it making people so self-dissatisfied
that they starve and deform and poison themselves.  Most of the time
I just play the game myself in a very small way, buying a new lipstick,
feeling happy about a pretty new silk shirt.

Ursula K. LeGuin

   

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When your inner eyes open, you can find immense beauty hidden within
the inconsequential details of daily life.  When your inner ears open,
you can hear the subtle, lovely music of the universe everywhere you go.

Timothy Ray Miller
  

Passing beauties are only the fugitive reflections of the eternal.  All beauty
alters and all life melts away; in short, everything passes with marvelous
rapidity; beautiful Helen of Troy has become a toothless skull,
then a handful of dust, then nothing.

Eliphas Levi

  

Beauty you may have with you always, if you will
but plant beauty in your heart.

Fred van Amburgh

beauty 2 - beauty 3
beauty 4 - beauty 5

  
An appearance of delicacy, and even fragility, is almost essential to beauty.

Edmund Burke
  

The criterion of true beauty is that it increases upon examination;
if false, that it lessens.

Fulke Greville

  

I was driving down a familiar road one fall day when I almost drove
off the road, the beauty was so intense.  It looked as if God had sent in
a team of the world’s finest artists overnight—and I was privy to the
opening day of his spectacle.  As I slowly drove along this festive row,
leaves danced in the air and brushed against my windshield.  It seemed
as if I had landed in Oz.  I was strongly tempted to get out
and clap at God’s imagination.

Sheila Walsh

   

        

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Yes, life can be mysterious and confusing--but there's much of life that's actually rather dependable and reliable.  Some principles apply to life in so many different contexts that they can truly be called universal--and learning what they are and how to approach them and use them can teach us some of the most important lessons that we've ever learned.
My doctorate is in Teaching and Learning.  I use it a lot when I teach at school, but I also do my best to apply what I've learned to the life I'm living, and to observe how others live their lives.  What makes them happy or unhappy, stressed or peaceful, selfish or generous, compassionate or arrogant?  In this book, I've done my best to pass on to you what I've learned from people in my life, writers whose works I've read, and stories that I've heard.  Perhaps these principles can be a positive part of your life, too!
Universal Principles of Living Life Fully.  Awareness of these principles can explain a lot and take much of the frustration out of the lives we lead.