Beauty And Peace Quotes

The portraits, of more historical than artistic interest, had gone; and tapestry, full of the blue and bronze of peacocks, fell over the doors, and shut out all history and activity untouched with beauty and peace; and now when I looked at my Crevelli and pondered on the rose in the hand of the Virgin, wherein the form was so delicate and precise that it seemed more like a thought than a flower, or at the grey dawn and rapturous faces of my Francesca, I knew all a Christian's ecstasy without his slavery to rule and custom; when I pondered over the antique bronze gods and goddesses, which I had mortgaged my house to buy, I had all a pagan's delight in various beauty and without his terror at sleepless destiny and his labour with many sacrifices; and I had only to go to my bookshelf, where every book was bound in leather, stamped with intricate ornament, and of a carefully chosen colour: Shakespeare in the orange of the glory of the world, Dante in the dull red of his anger, Milton in the blue grey of his formal calm; and I could experience what I would of human passions without their bitterness and without satiety. I had gathered about me all gods because I believed in none, and experienced every pleasure because I gave myself to none, but held myself apart, individual, indissoluble, a mirror of polished steel: I looked in the triumph of this imagination at the birds of Hera, glowing in the firelight as though they were wrought of jewels; and to my mind, for which symbolism wa ~ W.B. Yeats

Civilization has provided no peace, no spectacle, no assurance to the human heart which can transcend the simple, ever-changing, matchless beauty and peace of the natural world ~ Harvey Broome

See, I am very dependent ... on beauty and peace of the world ... on loyalty of friends ... on love in families ... on happiness and health of children. And I do not want to be free as long as I have it all ... ~ Galina Nelson

I feel bitterness is a religion and the people who practice it are the most vehement missionaries there are. There is great strength, beauty and peace in letting things go and practicing forgiveness. ~ Kristen Ashley

We spend so much time scrambling from one thing to the next, getting through it, getting to the end, and starting over again, that I would not forget to fully breathe in the miniscule moments of beauty and peace. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

Only spread a fern-frond over a man's head and worldly cares are cast out, and freedom and beauty and peace come in. ~ John Muir

As the sunset you've gone in beauty and peace. ~ Chocoholic

One student asks: Why should I live?

Steven Pinker answers: In the very act of asking that question, you are seeking reasons for your convictions, and so you are committed to reason as the means to discover and justify what is important to you. And there are so many reasons to live! As a sentient being, you have the potential to flourish. You can refine your faculty of reason itself by learning and debating. You can seek explanations of the natural world through science, and insight into the human condition through the arts and humanities. You can make the most of your capacity for pleasure and satisfaction, which allowed your ancestors to thrive and thereby allowed you to exist. You can appreciate the beauty and richness of the natural and cultural world. As the heir to billions of years of life perpetuating itself, you can perpetuate life in turn. You have been endowed with a sense of sympathy - the ability to like, love, respect, help, and show kindness - and you can enjoy the gift of mutual benevolence with friends, family, and colleagues. And because reason tells you that none of this is particular to you, you have the responsibility to provide to others what you expect for yourself. You can foster the welfare of other sentient beings by enhancing life, health, knowledge, freedom, abundance, safety, beauty, and peace. History shows that when we sympathize with others and apply our ingenuity to improving the human condition, we can make progress in doing so, a ~ Steven Pinker

There are so many sad and ugly things in the world that I feel I must try to counterbalance them with whatever beauty I can produce. Setting a pretty table in a world of pain might seem callous, given that people are starving and living in dreadful disease and poverty. But in trying to create islands of beauty and peace, I feel I am honoring the dreams of the world. ~ Isobelle Carmody

Nature becomes really and truly intimate in strange and lonely places. I have been actually worrying myself for days at the thought that after the moon is past her full I shall daily miss the moonlight more and more; feeling further and
further exiled when the beauty and peace which awaits my return to the riverside will no longer be there, and I shall have to come back through darkness. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

What distressed me most - more even than my own folly - was the perplexing question - How can beauty and ugliness dwell so near? Even with her altered complexion and face of dislike; disenchanted of the belief that clung around her; known for a living, walking sepulcher, faithless, deluding, traitorous; I felt, notwithstanding all this, that she was beautiful. Upon this I pondered with undiminished perplexity ... ~ George MacDonald

It sometimes happens that the town child is more alive to the fresh beauty of the country than a child who is country born. My brother and I were born in London ... but our descent, our interest and our joy were in the north country'.
Quoted in The Tale of Beatrix Potter a Biography by Margaret Lane, First Edition p 32-33 ~ Beatrix Potter

The peace the world pretends to desire is really no peace at all. To some men, peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others, peace means the freedom to rob brothers without interruption. To still others, it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody, peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure. ~ Thomas Merton

You're the mad one,' I said. 'If you could see yourself, hear your own voice, your music - which of course you play for yourself - you wouldn't see darkness, Nicki. You'd see an illumination that is all your own. Sombre, yes, but light and beauty come together in you in a thousand different patterns. ~ Anne Rice

We are all born and someday we'll all die. Most likely to some degree alone.What if our aloneness isn't a tragedy? What if our aloneness is what allows us to speak the truth without being afraid? What if our aloneness is what allows us to adventure – to experience the world as a dynamic presence – as a changeable, interactive thing?

If I lived in Bosnia or Rwanda or who knows where else, needless death wouldn't be a distant symbol to me, it wouldn't be a metaphor, it would be a reality.

And I have no right to this metaphor. But I use it to console myself. To give a fraction of meaning to something enormous and needless.

This realization. This realization that I will live my life in this world where I have privileges.

I can't cool boiling waters in Russia. I can't be Picasso. I can't be Jesus. I can't save the planet single-handedly.

I can wash dishes. ~ Rachel Corrie

The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good. ~ George Washington

A second floor window opened, and Kyle stuck his head and shoulders out so he could look down at us. "If you two are finished playing Cowboy and Indian out there, some of us would like to get their beauty sleep."

I looked at Warren. "You heard 'um Kemo Sabe. Me go to my little wigwam and get 'um shut-eye."

"How come you always get to play the Indian?" whined Warren, deadpan.

"Cause she's the Indian, white boy," said Kyle. ~ Patricia Briggs

Jesus' life was a storm of controversy. The apostles, like the prophets before them, could hardly go a day without controversy. Paul said that he debated daily in the marketplace. To avoid controversy is to avoid Christ. We can have peace, but it is a servile and carnal peace where truth is slain in the streets. ~ R.C. Sproul

I will always be on the side of those who have nothing and who are not even allowed to enjoy the nothing they have in peace. ~ Federico Garcia Lorca

Sophie picked her way through the forest, stepping over tree roots, and pushing aside low-lying branches, letting them snap back behind her with reckless abandon. The sun barely squeaked through the canopy of leaves above her, and down at ground level, it felt more like dusk than midday. ~ Julia Quinn

If you keep running away from yourself then be warned that love, joy, peace and fulfillment will keep running away from you! ~ Maddy Malhotra

You poor dear. I can hardly endure it when my brothers are staying at the town house. They're always causing some trouble or another."
"Oh, yes, and you never cause any trouble," Oliver teased. "Never mind the shooting match where you brought three men to blows over whose rifle you should deign to use. Or the spectacle you made of yourself when you dressed as a man to enter a match. Or-"
"You can shoot a rifle, Lady Celia?" Maria leaned forward. "How did you learn? I've always wanted to myself, but Papa and my cousins refused to show me how a rifle works. Could you teach me?"
"No!" Oliver and Freddy said in unison. Then Oliver added, "Absolutely not."
Lord Gabriel leaned close. "I'd be happy to teach you, Miss Butterfield."
"Stay out of this, Gabe," Oliver growled. "Bad enough you taught Celia. Maria already has enough weapons at her disposal."
His grandmother arched one eyebrow. "Pray tell, what sort of weapons do you mean?"
Oliver paused, then gave a lazy smile. "Why, her beauty, of course. That weapon is devastating enough."
"It won't stop a scoundrel from manhandling a woman," Lady Minerva put in.
"As if you know anything about that," Lord Jarret pointed out. "Just because the heroines in your books get manhandled with nauseating regularity doesn't mean the average woman does. ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Just the way sound creates visible waves as it travels through a droplet of water, our "belief waves" ripple through the quantum fabric of the universe to become our bodies and the healing, abundance, and peace-or disease, lack, and suffering-that we experience in life. And just the way we can tune a sound to change its patterns, we can tune our beliefs to preserve or destroy all that we cherish, including life itself. ~ Gregg Braden

Importance, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder and that there is nothing inherently "logical" about the preference of users in looking for one component rather than another of a compound heading. ~ Hans H Wellisch

The more humble and obedient to God a man is, the more wise and at peace he will be in all that he does. ~ Thomas A Kempis

But I loved Narcissus because as he lay on my banks and looked down at me, in the mirror of his eyes I saw ever my own beauty mirrored. ~ Oscar Wilde

Must beauty blossom, rooted in decay,
And night devour its flaming hues alway? ~ Clark Ashton Smith

It is astonishing to realize that growing up actually means to become one with Existence. It means to find the whole Existence within myself, it means to discover that Existence is alive in my own heart and being.
The song of a bird echoes my own inner voice, the beauty of a flower reflects my own inner beauty, a dog becomes an expression of my own unconditional love and friendship, the majestic mountains create an exstatic joy, and I discover all the shining stars of the sky within my own heart.
It is to realize that the whole Existence is alive, and that the underlying thread of consciousness is God. ~ Swami Dhyan Giten

He called you beautiful, for a black girl and you kissed him. It would not be the last time someone would pay you a provisional compliment, nor the last time you accept it. Back then, you had not yet realized, that those who view your beauty conditionally, undoubtedly felt the same towards your humanity. ~ Rafeif Ismail

Yet when, one day, standing on the outskirts of Yokohama town, bristling with its display of modern miscellanies, I watched the sunset in your southern sea, and saw its peace and majesty among your pine-clad hills, - with the great Fujiyama growing faint against the golden horizon, like a god overcome with his own radiance, - the music of eternity welled up through the evening silence, and I felt that the sky and the earth and the lyrics of the dawn and the dayfall are with the poets and idealists, and not with the marketmen robustly contemptuous of all sentiment, - that, after the forgetfulness of his own divinity, man will remember again that heaven is always in touch with his world, which can never be abandoned for good to the hounding wolves of the modern era, scenting human blood and howling to the skies. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Finally, gentlemen, there are people with an hereditary animus against private property. You may call this phenomenon degeneracy. But I tell you that you cannot entice a true thief, and thief by vocation, into the prose of honest vegetation by any gingerbread reward, or by the offer of a secure position, or by the gift of money, or by a woman's love: because there is here a permanent beauty of risk, a fascinating abyss of danger, the delightful sinking of the heart, the impetuous pulsation of life, the ecstasy! ~ Thomas Seltzer

Everyone has to build anew his sky of hope and peace. ~ Okakura Kakuzo

Is there something inside of you that is favoring peace? Because if there is, then congratulations: you are a human being. You have just reached, and felt, your most fundamental want. ~ Prem Rawat

A rural Venus, Selah rises from the
gold foliage of the Sixhiboux River, sweeps
petals of water from her skin. At once,
clouds begin to sob for such beauty.
Clothing drops like leaves.
"No one makes poetry,my Mme.
Butterfly, my Carmen, in Whylah,"
I whisper. She smiles: "We'll shape it with
our souls."
Desire illuminates the dark manuscript
of our skin with beetles and butterflies.
After the lightning and rain has ceased,
after the lightning and rain of lovemaking
has ceased, Selah will dive again into the
sunflower-open river. ~ George Elliott Clarke

What a type of happy family is the family of the Sun! With what order, with what harmony, with what blessed peace, do his children the planets move around him, shining with light which they drink in from their parent's in at once upon him and on one another! ~ Augustus William Hare

Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you, - and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you! ~ Charlotte Bronte

Dear to the heart of a girl is her own beauty and charm. ~ Ovid

The beauty he saw in her was the beauty she forgot to see in herself and what a beautiful reminder, that love is what will see us all through. ~ Nikki Rowe

We can realise a lasting peace and transform the East-West relationship to one of enduring co-operation. ~ George H. W. Bush

The equipment and weaponry will continually change and improve, and the size of the military will expand as needed, decreasing during times of peace. But the unyielding will of the soldier and the dedication of professional military leaders will not change. Our soldiers can do a great deal more under pressure than people think. You'd have to see them perform in combat to believe it. ~ George W. Dunaway

That's the beauty of coaching. You get to touch lives, you get to make a difference. You get to do things for people who will never pay you back and they say you never have had a perfect day until you've done something for someone who will never pay you back. ~ Morgan Wootten

The symbol of the Lotus flower gives a precious teaching that can inspire us to deal with life in the best possible way. Its roots take nourishment from muddy waters and yet bloom in full delicacy and beauty on the surface. Similarly, to have a positive mindset is a beautiful quality; nonetheless to be transformational it needs to be rooted firmly in reality to then blossom with the value which can be created from the muddy problem(s) ~ Dorotea Brandin

The rise of man from the animal to the human level was prolonged by the necessity of rising from a state of barbarism and violence to one of order and peace. ~ Leon Bourgeois

Everyone who believes in freedom must work diligently for sound money, fully redeemable. Nothing else is compatible with the humanitarian goals of peace and prosperity. ~ Ron Paul

Perhaps you would not like being married to me,' Beauty said. 'I do not know how to talk to people, and I have terrible taste in shirts. ~ Mallory Ortberg

Food is strength, and food is peace, and food is freedom, and food is a helping hand to people around the world whose good will and friendship we want. ~ John F. Kennedy

Whether we will be able to achieve world peace or not, we have no choice but to work toward that goal. If we allow love and compassion to be dominated by anger, we will sacrifice the best part of our human intelligence - wisdom, our ability to decide between right and wrong. Along with selfishness, anger is one of the most serious problems facing the world today. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

But in the midst of all that uncertainty and lack of clarity, there lies a wild beauty. A hope. Possibility. The promise of something bigger than us happening just beneath the surface that we can't see. ~ Mandy Hale

Rest in peace'. That's not the way these accounts are kept. We don't rest in peace. The life of a good man who has died belongs to the people who cared about him, and ought to, and maybe itself is as much comfort as ought to be asked or offered. And surely the talk of a reunion in Heaven is thin comfort to people who need each other here as much as we do. I ain't saying I don't believe there's a Heaven. I surely hope there is. That surely would pay off a lot of mortgages. But I do say it ain't easy to believe. And even while I hope for it, I've got to admit I'd rather go to Port William. ~ Wendell Berry

I was born in 1962, and it seems that throughout my entire life the world has demanded peace but maintained conflict. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Dark and silent and stale, I am no prey for them. I am far from the sounds of blood and breath, immured. I shall not speak of my sufferings. Cowering deep down among them I feel nothing. It is there I die, unbeknown to my stupid flesh. That which is seen, that which cries and writhes, my witless remains. Somewhere in this turmoil thought struggles on, it too wide of the mark. It too seeks me, as it always has, where I am not to be found. It too cannot be quiet. On others let it wreak its dying rage, and leave me in peace. ~ Samuel Beckett

That as my sister-in-law at Colchester had said, beauty, wit, manners, sense, good humour, good behaviour, education, virtue, piety, or any other qualification, whether of body or mind, had no power to recommend; that money only made a woman agreeable; that men chose mistresses indeed by the gust of their affection, and it was requisite
to a whore to be handsome, well-shaped, have a good mien and a graceful behaviour; but that for a wife, no deformity would shock the fancy, no ill qualities the judgment; the money was the thing; the portion was
neither crooked nor monstrous, but the money was always agreeable, whatever the wife was. ~ Daniel Defoe

Their lives were precarious and they knew it. They were trying their best to fit themselves into a country which would never quite accept them, and to make themselves acceptable in a part of the world where their intrusion was resented in the vain hope that thus their establishments might endure ... The Orient remained strange and hostile. Unfamiliar diseases abounded. No one could be trusted. There was never security or peace for long. In any alley-way an assassin might be lurking, sent down from the Old Man of the Mountain. At any moment the lord might have to rise from his couch to ride out against enemy raiders. At any moment his lady might find herself in charge of the defence of her castle. At any moment the festivities might be interrupted by the sound of the infidel mangonels pounding against the walls. Life was merry, but it was short; and when the crisis came there was no lack of gallantry among the lords and ladies of Outremer. They had tasted with relish the gracious things of life; and they faced their doom with pride and resolution. ~ Steven Runciman

The US is indeed a terrorist nation ... It's also the greatest purveyor of violence on earth over the past half century, and the foremost threat to world peace today. ~ Bill Ayers