Beautiful Objects Quotes

One cannot create happiness with beautiful objects, but one can spoil quite a lot of happiness with bad ones ~ Finn Juhl

All one wants to do is make a small, finished, polished, burnished, beautiful object ... I mean, that's all one wants to do. One has nothing to say about the world, or society, or morals or politics or anything else. One just wants to get the damn thing done, you know? Kafka had it right when he said that the artist is the man who has nothing to say. It's true. You get the thing done, but you don't actually have anything to communicate, apart from the object itself. ~ John Banville

I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN most interested in the question of what makes a house a home. What are the elements that move a house beyond its physical structure and provide the warmth that we all crave? In my fifteen years as a designer, I've come to understand that the answer is simple: It is about surrounding ourselves with things we love.

(...) And in this case, the beauty comes from the owners' love of books.

Books are beautiful objects in their own right - their bindings and covers - and the space they fill on shelves or stacked on coffee tables in colorful piles add balance and texture to any room. And just like any other part of a home, books require maintenance: They need to be dusted, categorized, rearranged, and maintained. Our relationship with them is dynamic and ever changing.

But our connection to them goes beyond the material. In each house we visited, the libraries were the heart of the home, meaningful to the collectors' lives. In this book, we tried to capture what they brought to the home - the life and spirit books added. Some subjects have working libraries they constantly reference; others fill their shelves with the potential pleasures of the unread. When we visited the homes, many people could find favorite books almost by osmosis, using systems known only to themselves.

(...) As we found repeatedly, surrounding yourself with books you love tells the story of your life, your interests, your passions, your values. Your ~ Nina Freudenberger

The strongest affection and utmost zeal should, I think, promote the studies concerned with the most beautiful objects. This is the discipline that deals with the universe's divine revolutions, the stars' motions, sizes, distances, risings and settings ... for what is more beautiful than heaven? ~ Nicolaus Copernicus

When we see a beautiful object, a beautiful garden, or a beautiful flower, let us think that there we behold a ray of the infinite beauty of God, who has given existence to that object. ~ Alphonsus Liguori

For the first time in his life, he stopped worrying about results, and as a consequence the terms "success" and "failure" had suddenly lost their meaning for him. The true purpose of art was not to create beautiful objects, he discovered. It was a method of understanding, a way of penetrating the world and finding one's place in it, and whatever aesthetic qualities an individual canvas might have were almost an incidental by-product of the effort to engage oneself in this struggle, to enter into the thick of things. ~ Paul Auster

I didn't originally intend to be an artist; I was much more interested in decorative arts--daily life, beautiful objects. ~ Helaine Posner

I come not, Ambrosia for any of the purposes thou hast named," replied Marcela, "but to defend myself and to prove how unreasonable are all those who blame me for their sorrow and for Chrysostom's death; and therefore I ask all of you that are here to give me your attention, for will not take much time or many words to bring the truth home to persons of sense. Heaven has made me, so you say, beautiful, and so much so that in spite of yourselves my beauty leads you to love me; and for the love you show me you say, and even urge, that I am bound to love you. By that natural understanding which God has given me I know that everything beautiful attracts love, but I cannot see how, by reason of being loved, that which is loved for its beauty is bound to love that which loves it; besides, it may happen that the lover of that which is beautiful may be ugly, and ugliness being detestable, it is very absurd to say, "I love thee because thou art beautiful, thou must love me though I be ugly." But supposing the beauty equal on both sides, it does not follow that the inclinations must be therefore alike, for it is not every beauty that excites love, some but pleasing the eye without winning the affection; and if every sort of beauty excited love and won the heart, the will would wander vaguely to and fro unable to make choice of any; for as there is an infinity of beautiful objects there must be an infinity of inclinations, and true love, I have heard it said, is indivisible, and must be ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The singular point of beautiful objects, and people, is that they are experienced not as parts, or ratios between cheekbones and chin, but as wholes. The experience of beauty is a perception, but it is one that mixes up various other sensations and makes them converge in a particular way. ~ Charles Jencks

I don't own a Kindle, no. I love books, they are beautiful objects. ~ John Banville

I love grand scale. One of the things that everybody mentions is that my novels are beautiful objects in the sense that the elements of the actual book are being extruded and re-contextualized. ~ Richard Grossman

The things that we preceive as beautiful may be different, but the actual characteristics we ascribe to beautiful objects are similar. Think about it. When something strikes us as beautiful, it displays more presence and sharpness of shape and vividness of color, doesn't it? It stands out. It shines. It seems almost iridescent compared to the dullness of other objects less attractive. ~ James Redfield

I have some beautiful 20th-century drawings and a few paintings, but I'm not a collector, and I'm not particularly attached to objects. ~ Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

Some people won't dog-ear the pages. Others won't place the book facedown, pages splayed. Some won't dare make a mark in the margin. Get over it. Books exist to impart their worlds to you, not to be beautiful objects to save for some other day. We implore you to fold, crack, and scribble on your books whenever the desire takes you. Underline the good bits, exclaim "YES!" and "NO!" in the margins. Invite others to inscribe and date the frontispiece. Draw pictures, jot down phone numbers and Web addresses, make journal entries, draft letters to friends or world leaders. Scribble down ideas for a novel of your own, sketch bridges you want to build, dresses you want to design. Stick postcards and pressed flowers between the pages.

When next you open the book, you'll be able to find the bits that made you think, laugh, and cry the first time around. And you'll remember that you picked up that coffee stain in the cafe where you also picked up that handsome waiter. Favorite books should be naked, faded, torn, their pages spilling out. Love them like a friend, or at least a favorite toy. Let them wrinkle and age along with you. ~ Ella Berthoud & Susan Elderkin

In what resides the most characteristic Virtue of humanity?
In good works?
Possibly.
In the creation of beautiful objects? Perhaps.
But some would look in a different direction, and find it in detachment. To all such David Hume must be a great saint in the calendar; for no mortal being was ever more completely divested of the trammels of the personal and the particular, none ever practiced with more consummated success the divine art of impartiality ~ Lytton Strachey

The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must bestripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living laid for a foundation. ~ Henry David Thoreau

One of the most beautiful objects I have ever seen was a Yupik wolf mask, made in Nunivak in around 1890. ~ John Burnside

My home is different from my mother's, because hers is filled with beautiful objects that I was always afraid of breaking. My home is the opposite. Bring on the kids, the dogs, the parties - there's nothing that's so important it can't be broken. ~ Cybill Shepherd

Clark had always been fond of beautiful objects, and in his present state of mind, all objects were beautiful. He stood by the case and found himself moved by every object he saw there, by the human enterprise each object had required. Consider the snow globe. Consider the mind that invented those miniature storms, the factory worker who turned sheets of plastic into white flakes of snow, the hand that drew the plan for the miniature Severn City with its church steeple and city hall, the as**sembly-line worker who watched the globe glide past on a conveyer belt somewhere in China. Consider the white gloves on the hands of the woman who inserted the snow globes into boxes, to be packed into larger boxes, crates, shipping containers. Consider the card games played belowdecks in the evenings on the ship carrying the containers across the ocean, a hand stubbing out a cigarette in an overflowing ashtray, a haze of blue smoke in dim light, the cadences of a half dozen languages united by common profanities, the sailors' dreams of land and women, these men for whom the ocean was a gray-line horizon to be traversed in ships the size of overturned skyscrapers. Consider the signature on the shipping manifest when the ship reached port, a signature unlike any other on earth, the coffee cup in the hand of the driver delivering boxes to the distribution center, the secret hopes of the UPS man carrying boxes of snow globes from there to the Severn City Airport. Clark shook the globe and he ~ Emily St. John Mandel

Art thieves steal more than beautiful objects; they steal memories and identities. They steal history. ~ Robert K. Wittman

A strange, beautiful new world awaits, Leonard.
We've found an oasis in their ruins. We really have.
You want to see it, so just hold on, okay? ~ Matthew Quick

You know when I said I knew little about love? That wasn't true. I know a lot about love. I've seen it, centuries and centuries of it, and it was the only thing that made watching your world bearable. All those wars. Pain, lies, hate... It made me want to turn away and never look down again. But when I see the way that mankind loves... You could search to the furthest reaches of the universe and never find anything more beautiful. So yes, I know that love is unconditional. But I also know that it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable and strangely easy to mistake for loathing, and... What I'm trying to say, Tristan is... I think I love you. Is this love, Tristan? I never imagined I'd know it for myself. My heart... It feels like my chest can barely contain it. Like it's trying to escape because it doesn't belong to me any more. It belongs to you. And if you wanted it, I'd wish for nothing in exchange - no gifts. No goods. No demonstrations of devotion. Nothing but knowing you loved me too. Just your heart, in exchange for mine. ~ Neil Gaiman

The greatest country, the richest country, is not that which has the most capitalists, monopolists, immense grabbings, vast fortunes, with its sad, sad soil of extreme, degrading, damning poverty, but the land in which there are the most homesteads, freeholds - where wealth does not show such contrasts high and low, where all men have enough - a modest living- and no man is made possessor beyond the sane and beautiful necessities. ~ Walt Whitman

And yet I shall try again: "they are murdering me!"
all right, all together once more: "they are murdering me!" and again: "murdering" ... I want to write this in such a way that you will cover your ears, your membranaceous, simian ears that you hide under strands of beautiful feminine hair
but I know them, I see them, I pinch them, the cold little things, I worry them with my fingers to somehow warm them, bring them to life, render them human, force them to hear me. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Every moment in our lives brings the opportunity to love and appreciate this beautiful magical life. ~ Debasish Mridha

Jump or stay in the boat. ~ Margaret Stohl

You protect us all from ugliness. I wanted you to have something beautiful, ~ Jon Kiln

Providence is like a curious piece of tapestry made of a thousand shreds, which, single, appear useless, but put together, they represent a beautiful history to the eye. ~ John Flavel

The big catalyst was seeing my sister, when I was 11, doing a dramatic recital. When I saw her on the stage and everyone listening to her so patiently, quietly, that's all I wanted: for someone to look at me and listen to me, but in some beautiful and artistic way. ~ Gene Wilder

The desert at night was black and a strange madder-tinted silver; the sky was black, and the great contorted cliffs, and the vast expanses of sand that stretched out in all directions. But the red moon cast a pale crimson-tinged luminescence over everything, and far above the stars were glittering points of silver. ~ Rachel Neumeier

... schools in many industrialized nations were not, for the most part, designed to produce innovative thinkers or questioners -- their primary purpose was to produce workers. The author Seth Godin writes, "Our grandfathers and great grandfathers built schools to train people to have a lifetime of productive labor as part of the industrialized economy. And it worked."
To create good workers, educations systems put a premium on compliancy and rote memorization of basic knowledge -- excellent qualities in an industrial worker. (Or, as the cartoonist and Simpsons creator Matt Groening puts it, "it seems the main rule that traditional schools teach is how to sit in rows quietly, which is perfect training for grown-up work in a dull office or factory, but not so good for education.")
And not so good for questioning: To the extent a school is like a factory, students who inquire about "the way things are" could be seen as insubordinate. It raises, at least in my mind, a question that may seem extreme: If schools were build on a factory model, were they actually designed to squelch questions? ~ Warren Berger

It's just the overall lack of privacy. I've always been a very shy person and so it invades that a lot. It goes with the territory so I'm very grateful to be able to do what I do. I love it and I love acting. I love being on set. I love the whole practice of filmmaking but the lack of privacy is hard. Fans are amazing because for the most part it's just love that they are sending to you. It's beautiful. ~ Austin Butler

The mask of secularism may differ in thickness, may be less visible, but religion is always there hidden under hallowed big beautiful words ~ Nawal El Saadawi

I never really got over you though. I tried…so hard. But something always held me back."
"What was that something?" I asked.
"My beautiful memories. I want to make more with you. Someday. Maybe."
Someday. Maybe. ~ Emery Rose

When you are right, everything around you is right, for the beautiful flow that is inside your heart has the capacity to spread its fragrance of oneness-light all around you. ~ Sri Chinmoy

I do mostly Southern landscapes. I do beautiful old barns that are falling down, and beautiful trees reflecting in the water. My lovely wife Dorothy and I travel quite a bit, so I take pictures of different things that inspire me to come home, when I come home here in North Carolina, into my art studio and paint these things. ~ James Best

Human beings suck the life out of everything that's beautiful. ~ Kelly Braffet

My parents couldn't give me a whole lot of financial support, but they gave me good genes. My dad is a handsome son-of-a-gun, and my mom is beautiful. And I've definitely been the lucky recipient. So, thank you, Mom and Dad. ~ Ashton Kutcher

Pandora, who walked down the aisle of the estate chapel on Devon's arm, was radiantly beautiful in a dress of white silk, the billowing skirts so intricately gathered and draped that no lace or ornamental trim had been necessary. She wore a coronet of fresh daisies and a veil of sheer tulle and carried a small bouquet of roses and daisies.
If West had any remaining doubts about St. Vincent's true feelings for his bride, they were forever banished as he saw the man's expression. St. Vincent stared at Pandora as if she were a miracle, his cool composure disrupted by a faint flush of emotion. When Pandora reached him and the veil was pushed back, St. Vincent broke with etiquette by leaning down to press a tender kiss on her forehead.
"That part isn't 'til later," Pandora whispered to him, but it was loud enough that the people around them overheard, and a rustle of laughter swept through the crowd. ~ Lisa Kleypas

His moods changed minute to minute, and Jan could change him quicker than anyone. The more he loved her the more mixed up he got. He was such a beautiful man, but so unstable. ~ David Ritz

The natural movement of one's soul is upwards. But just as any object is dragged down when a heavy weight is tied to it, the burden of the body drags down the soul. ~ Vinoba Bhave

Rama, the ancient idol of the heroic ages, the embodiment of truth, of morality, the ideal son, the ideal husband, and above all, the ideal king, this Rama has been presented before us by the great sage Valmiki. No language can be purer, none chaster, none more beautiful, and at the same time simpler, than the language in which the great poet has depicted the life of Rama. ~ Swami Vivekananda

There is nothing more prestigious then a beautiful soul painting the world with his or her vibrant colors ~ Ms. Bonnie Zackson Koury

The reason that I look so plain is that I want you to see my inner beauty, and then you will see me as beautiful. ~ Anthony T. Hincks

Racism, hate, and bigotry are EVIL and WICKED no matter how you try to rationalize it. I couldn't imagine living my life with this crap in my heart. I love building new relationships and I enjoy learning about different cultures! If people would change their thinking and open up their hearts, they'd be amazed at the beautiful relationships that they could have. And, for the record, I couldn't imagine ALL of my friends being black. There are too many amazing people from different backgrounds that I still have yet to meet. NO WAY would I limit my relationships based on race, absolutely not! I am free to like and love who I want to and I won't allow anybody to persuade me with their opinions. I have my own mind! I'm my own person! I refuse to dislike and/or hate another race 'just because!' I am Stephanie Lahart: BOLD. BRAVE. STRONG. ~ Stephanie Lahart

To enjoy the nectar of life, I like to kiss you like a beautiful bee kisses the flower. ~ Debasish Mridha

Oleander time, she said. Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind. ~ Janet Fitch

ANTHONY:
I feel you, Johanna, I feel you
Do they think that walls can hide you?
Even now I'm at your window
I am in the dark beside you,
Buried sweetly in your yellow hair, Johanna…

SWEENEY TODD:
And are you beautiful and pale,
With yellow hair, like her
I'd want you beautiful and pale,
The way I've dreamed you were, Johanna...

ANTHONY:
Johanna...

SWEENEY TODD:
And if you're beautiful, what then,
With yellow hair, like wheat?
I think we shall not meet again -
My little dove, my sweet Johanna…

ANTHONY:
I'll steal you, Johanna…

SWEENEY TODD:
Goodbye, Johanna.
You're gone, and yet you're mine.
I'm fine, Johanna, I'm fine!

ANTHONY:
Johanna…

BEGGAR WOMAN:
Smoke! Smoke! Sign of the devil! Sign of the devil!
City on fire!
Witch! Witch! Smell it, sir! An evil smell!
Every night at the vespers bell -
Smoke that comes from the mouth of hell -
City on fire! City on fire!
Mischief! Mischief! Mischief...

SWEENEY TODD:
And if I never hear your voice,
My turtledove, my dear,
I still have reason to rejoice:
The way ahead is clear, Johanna...

JOHANNA:
I'll marry Anthony Sunday
Anthony…Sunday…

ANTHONY:
I feel you…

SWEENEY TODD:
And in that darkness when I'm blind
With what I can't forget -
~ Stephen Sondheim

What you're doing is building a horrible kind of logic. People read what you write and they say, 'Yes, he is talking about things that really happen,' and they keep reading, and it makes sense to them. You're explaining things that can't be defended, and the explanations themselves are mad, just bizarre - but you offer them with such confidence. It was because she kept the chain on the door; it was because he needed to let off steam after a hard day's scraping and bowing at work; it was because she was irritating and stupid; it was because she lied to him, made a fool of him; it was because she had to die, she just had to, it makes dramatic sense; it was because 'nothing is more poetic than the death of a beautiful woman'; it was because of this, it was because of that. It's obscene to make such things reasonable. ~ Helen Oyeyemi

Thought a lot about how beautiful and powerful courage and faith are when they are found together. ~ Glennon Doyle Melton

Unless we look at a person and see the beauty there is in this person, we can contribute nothing to him. One does not help a person by discerning what is wrong, what is ugly, what is distorted. Christ looked at everyone he met, at the prostitute, at the thief, and saw the beauty hidden there. Perhaps it was distorted, perhaps damaged, but it was beauty none the less, and what he did was to call out this beauty. ~ Anthony Of Sourozh

Clare," said a voice behind me. Not Nate's, but just as familiar.
"I'll get going," Nate said, backing up. "If you see the dumbass, tell him I'm mad at him for standing me up."
I turned around.
"The dumbass?" Justin asked.
"Yes, you're not the only one in town. Who knew?"
He smiled. Every time I tried to hurt him, he just smiled. I'd have to try harder.
"You look beautiful tonight," he said, looking me up and down. "You wore that dress on the picnic we took in the spring. Remember, it was the first warm day of the season . . ." His voice trailed off.
"I'd love to wax nostalgic, Justin, but I've got work to do. ~ Kim Harrington

I could not understand how people could not like something as beautiful as the aerodrome. But I had lately become convinced that in general people were pretty boring. They liked to moan for hours on end about how hard it was to make ends meet, about the money they owed, the price of food, and other similar worries, but the minute some more brilliant or attractive subject come up, they were struck deaf. ~ Ismail Kadare

What a beautiful world it was once. At least a river of it was. ~ Norman Maclean

Pleased be you, my Lord, with all your creatures, especially Sir Brother Sun, who is the day and through whom you give us light. And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendours and bears likeness of you, Most High One. ~ Francis Of Assisi

Science confirms that when an individual is asked to make a choice between two insignificant objects, the person's brain knows which he will choose up to six seconds before he ever vocally says a word. ~ Linda Armstrong

For Nature is love, and finds haunts for true love, Where nothing can hear or intrude; It hides from the eagle and joins with the dove, In beautiful green solitude. ~ John Clare

Space is dark but, of course, when we're on the sun side of the Earth, we're in full illumination and we have all the reflection of the Earth below us, beautiful blue Earth and we're in daylight. Only on the back side, opposite side of the sun, it seems like night to us, too. ~ Kevin A. Ford