beauty - beauty 2
beauty 3 - beauty 5

Everything has beauty,
but not everyone sees it.

Confucius

  

Our inability to see the beauty doesn't suggest in the slightest that beauty is not there.  Rather, it suggests that we are not looking carefully enough or with broad enough perspective to see the beauty.

Harold Kushner
"God's Fingerprints on the Soul"
Handbook for the Soul

      
To cultivate the sense of the beautiful is one of the most effectual ways of cultivating an appreciation of the divine goodness.

Christian Bovee

  
  
The voice of beauty speaks softly; it creeps only into the most fully awakened souls.

Friedrich Nietzsche
  

Everything in the world is beautiful, but People only recognize beauty if they sees it either seldom or from afar.  Listen, today we are gods!  Our blue shadows are enormous!  We move in a gigantic, joyful world!

Vladimir Nabokov

   

Life is so full of unpredictable beauty and strange surprises.  Sometimes that beauty is too much for me to handle.  Do you know that feeling?  When something is just too beautiful?  When someone says something or writes something or plays something that moves you to the point of tears, maybe even changes you.

Mark Oliver Everett

   

Beauty is so abundant; even if it's not within immediate reach,
it's not hard to find.  Indeed, it may be right in front of your nose,
something you take for granted until someone else points it out.


Leslie Levine

   

quotations - contents - welcome page - obstacles
the people behind the words - our current e-zine - articles and excerpts
Daily Meditations, Year One - Year Two - Year Three - Year Four
     

Sign up for your free daily spiritual or general quotation
~ ~ Sign up for your free daily meditation

   

    

True beauty must come, must be grown, from within.

Ralph W. Trine

    

Almost any intense emotion may open our “inward eye” to the beauty
of reality.  Falling in love appears to do it for some people.  The beauty
of nature or the exhilaration of artistic creation does it for others.  Probably
any high experience may momentarily stretch our souls up on tiptoe, so
that we catch a glimpse of that marvelous beauty which is always
there, but which we are not often tall enough to perceive.

Margaret Prescott Montague

   

Take from our hearts the love of the beautiful,
and you take away all the charm of life.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

  

We have some inspiring and motivational books that may interest you.  Our main way of supporting this site is through the sale of books, either physical copies or digital copies for your Amazon Kindle (including the online reader).  All of the money that we earn through them comes back to the site in one way or another.  Just click on the picture to the left to visit our page of books, both fiction and non-fiction!

   
The best part of beauty is that
which no picture can express.

Francis Bacon

It is amazing how complete is the delusion
that beauty is goodness.

Leo Tolstoy

Beauty is everlasting
And dust is for a time.

Marianne Moore

For beauty being the best of all we know
Sums up the unsearchable and secret aims
Of nature.

Robert Bridges

beauty - beauty 2
beauty 3 - beauty 5

We were made to enjoy music, to enjoy beautiful sunsets,
to enjoy looking at the billows of the sea and to be thrilled with
a rose that is bedecked by dew. . . . Human beings are actually
created for the transcendent, for the sublime, for the beautiful,
for the truthful. . . and all of us are given the task of trying to make
this world a little more hospitable to these beautiful things.

Desmond Tutu

   

Without painting, sculpture, music, poetry, and the
emotions produced by natural beauty of every kind,
life would lose half its charm.

Herbert Spencer

    

The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty
are the only hours when we really live.

Richard Jefferies

   

   

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

   

 HOME - contents - Daily Meditations - abundance - acceptance - achievement - action - adversity - advertising - aging - ambition
anger - anticipation - anxiety - apathy - appreciation - arrogance - art - attitude - authenticity - awakening - awareness - awe
balance - beauty - being yourself - beliefs - body - brooding - busyness - caring - celebration - challenges -
change - character
charity - children - choices - Christianity - coincidence - commitment - common sense - community - comparison - compassion
competition - complaining - compliments - compromise - confidence - conformity - conscience - contentment - control - cooperation
courage - covetousness - creativity - crisis - criticism - cruelty -  death - decisions - desire - determination - disappointment
discipline - discouragement - diversity - doubt - dreams - earth - education - ego - emotions - encouragement - enlightenment
enthusiasm - envy - eternity - ethics - example - exercise - experience - failure - faith - fame - family - fate - fathers - fault-finding
fear - feelings - finances - flowers - forgiveness - freedom - friendship - frustration - fun - the future - garden of life - gardening
generosity - gentleness - giving - goals - God - goodness - grace - gratitude - greatness - greed - grief - growing up - guilt - habit
happiness - hatred - healing - health - heart - helpfulness - home - honesty - hope - hospitality - humility - hurry - ideals - identity
idleness  - idolatry - ignorance - illusion - imagination - impatience - individuality - the inner child - inspiration - integrity - intimacy
introspection - intuition - jealousy - journey of life - joy - judgment - karma - kindness - knowledge - language - laughter - laziness
leadership - learning - letting go - life - listening - loneliness - love - lying - magic - marriage - materialism - meanness - meditation
mindfulness - miracles - mistakes - mistrust - moderation - money - mothers - motivation - music - mystery - nature - negative attitude
now - oneness - open-mindedness - opportunity - optimism - pain - parenting - passion - the past - patience - peace - perfectionism
perseverance - perspective - pessimism - play - poetry - positive thoughts - possessions - potential - poverty - power - praise
prayer
- prejudice - pride - principle - problems - progress - prosperity - purpose - reading -recreation - reflection - relationships
religion - reputation - resentment - respect - responsibility - rest - revenge - risk - role models - running - ruts - sadness - safety
seasons of life - self - self-love - self-pity - self-reliance - self-respect selfishness - serving others - shame - silence - simplicity
slowing down - smiles -solitude - sorrow - spirit - stories - strength - stress - stupidity - success - suffering - talent
the tapestry of life - teachers - thoughts - time - today - tolerance - traditions - trees - trust - truth - unfulfilled dreams - values
vanity - virtue - vulnerability - walking - war - wealth - weight issues - wisdom - women - wonder - work - worry - worship
youth - spring - summer - fall - winter - Christmas - Thanksgiving - New Year - America - Zen sayings - articles & excerpts
Native American wisdom - The Law of Attraction - obstacles to living life fully - e-zine archives - quotations contents
our most recent e-zine - Great Thinkers - the people behind the words

   

   

   

   
Beauty without virtue is a flower without perfume.

French proverb
   

Beauty abounds in the most surprising locales and within even the
most soul-searing experiences.  We simply need to look for beauty
and take the time to appreciate and digest what we see.  I agree
with Margaret Wolfe Hungerford's quote "Beauty is in the eye of the
beholder" and would add that beauty is also in the beholder's ability
to see. . . . In order to enjoy everyday beauty, you need a desire
to see it and the willingness to open your heart to it.  It helps when
you go about your day expecting to be blessed by beauty everywhere
you look and turn.  Expecting and paying attention to the beauty of
the moment will draw to you loveliness beyond imagination.
Appreciating and reveling in beauty can soothe your soul, relax your
body, and immerse you in gratitude.

Sue Patton Thoele

   

beauty - beauty 2
beauty 3 - beauty 5

We have been as usual asking the wrong question.  It does not matter a hoot
what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. . . .
The real and proper question is:  why is it beautiful?

Annie Dillard
    

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in
and pray in, where nature may heal and cheer
and give strength to the body and soul.

John Muir

   

Beauty, have pity, for the strong have power,
The rich their wealth, the beautiful their grace,
Summer of man its sunlight and its flower,
Spring time of man all April in a face.

Only, as in the jostling in the Strand,
Where the mob thrusts or loiters or is loud
The beggar with the saucer in his hand
Asks only a penny from the passing crowd,

So, from this glittering world with all its fashion,
Its fire and play of men, its stir, its march,
Let me have wisdom, Beauty, wisdom and passion,
Bread to the soul, rain where the summers parch.

Give me but these, and though the darkness close,
Even the night will blossom as the rose.

John Masefield

   

quotations - contents - welcome page - obstacles
the people behind the words - our current e-zine - articles and excerpts
Daily Meditations, Year One - Year Two - Year Three - Year Four
     

Sign up for your free daily spiritual or general quotation
~ ~ Sign up for your free daily meditation

   

The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty,
even one's own--even more, one's own, for that has been put
in our care and we are responsible for its well-being.

Katherine Anne Porter

   

Is your life beautiful?  Do you live in surroundings that you have
made beautiful through your own unique, creative ideas?  To
expect and lovingly require beauty to be apparent in all areas of
your life is to be deeply loving to yourself, your soul, your world,
and shows reverence to God and all of life.   There is always
something beautiful to be found, right where you are, if you will
look for it.   Concentrate your thoughts on the good, the
beautiful, and the true things in life.

John Marks Templeton
Worldwide Laws of Life

   
Beauty is the mysterious quality that shouts loudly, "Ah, this experience is right for me now!"  It is an abstract term that is difficult to define because it has a slightly different meaning for each of us.  But I think we will agree that when we accept or experience beauty, we intuitively know that life contains much more than we can comprehend.  Beauty always suggests something beyond--something greater than ourselves.

The search for beauty is a journey into the meaning of the universe.  The experience of something beautiful is a reward for our perseverance.  Beauty goes beyond the hardships of life and can make it all worthwhile.  When beauty finally suffuses our souls, nothing else will take precedence, because we will have discovered the essence of God.

Charles D. Lelly
The Beautiful Way of Life
   

          
   

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.