Substance Over Beauty Quotes

My great adventure is really Proust. Well
what remains to be written after that? I'm only in the first volume, and there are, I suppose, faults to be found, but I am in a state of amazement; as if a miracle were being done before my eyes. How, at last, has someone solidified what has always escaped
and made it too into this beautiful and perfectly enduring substance? One has to put the book down and gasp. The pleasure becomes physical
like sun and wine and grapes and perfect serenity and intense vitality combined. Far otherwise is it with Ulysses; to which I bind myself like a martyr to a stake, and have thank God, now finished
My martyrdom is over. I hope to sell it for £4.10. ~ Virginia Woolf

In the great meteor shower of August, the Perseid, I wail all day for the shooting stars I miss. They're out there showering down, committing hari-kiri in a flame of fatal attraction, and hissing perhaps into the ocean. But at dawn what looks like a blue dome clamps down over me like a lid on a pot. The stars and planets could smash and I'd never know. Only a piece of ashen moon occasionally climbs up or down the inside of the dome, and our local star without surcease explodes on our heads. We have really only that one light, one source for all power, and yet we must turn away from it by universal decree. Nobody here on the planet seems aware of that strange, powerful taboo, that we all walk about carefully averting our faces, this way and that, lest our eyes be blasted forever. ~ Annie Dillard

This is the part they don't tell you about in the movies. Or in On the Road. This is not rock 'n' roll.

You are not William Burroughs, and it doesn't make a damn bit of difference if Kurt Cobain was slumped over in an alleyway in Seattle the day Bleach came out. There is no junkie chic. This is not Soho and you are not Sid Vicious. You are not a drugstore cowboy and you are not spotting trains. You are not a part of anything - no underground sect, no counter-culture movement, no music scene, nothing. You have just been released from jail and are walking down Mission Street, alternating between taking a hit off a cigarette and puking, looking for coins on the ground so you can catch a bus as you shit yourself. ~ Joe Clifford

The beauty of the written word is that it can be held close to the heart and read over and over again. ~ Florence Littauer

Somehow a bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of beauty and a boy forever. ~ Helen Rowland

At first the beauty of the melodies and of the interwoven words in elven-tongues, even though he understood them little, held him in a spell, as soon as as he began to attend to them. Almost it seemed that the words took shape, and visions of far lands and bright things that he had never yet imagined opened out before him; and the firelit hall became like a golden mist above the seas of foam that sighed upon the margins of the world. Then the enchantment became more and more dreamlike, until he felt that an endless river of swelling gold and silver was flowing over him, too multitudinous for its pattern to be comprehended; it became part of the throbbing air about him, and it drenched and drowned him. swiftly he sank under its shining weight into a deep realm of sleep. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Nature is full of patterns and we humans love finding them, creating them, repeating them. This is the core of language, math, music, and even ritual, which is the repetition of words or actions deemed worthy of representing something bigger than ourselves. My view is that all over the world and across time, these are all a form of art, an elaborate performance or a secret poem, all vital in their ability to help us face the nature of time and change, life and death, and everything else we cannot control. ~ Sasha Sagan

Competitive rowing is an undertaking of extraordinary beauty preceded by brutal punishment. Unlike most sports, which draw primarily on particular muscle groups, rowing makes heavy and repeated use of virtually every muscle in the body, despite the fact that a rower, as Al Ulbrickson liked to put it, "scrimmages on his posterior annex." And rowing makes these muscular demands not at odd intervals but in rapid sequence, over a protracted period of time, repeatedly and without respite. On one occasion, after watching the Washington freshmen practice, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Royal Brougham marveled at the relentlessness of the ~ Daniel James Brown

IT is an eternal phenomenon: the insatiate will can always, by means of an illusion spread over things, detain its creatures in life and compel them to live on. One is chained by the Socratic love of knowledge and the delusion of being able thereby to heal the eternal wound of existence; another is ensnared by art's seductive veil of beauty fluttering before his eyes; still another by the metaphysical comfort that beneath the flux of phenomena eternal life flows on indestructibly: to say nothing of the more ordinary and almost more powerful illusions which the will has always at hand. These three planes of illusion are on the whole designed only for the more nobly formed natures, who in general feel profoundly the weight and burden of existence, and must be deluded by exquisite stimulants into forgetfulness of their sorrow. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The import is not the kind of work woman does, but rather the quality of the work she furnishes. She can give suffrage or the ballot no new quality, nor can she receive anything from it that will enhance her own quality. Her development, her freedom, her independence, must come from and through herself. First, by asserting herself as a personality, and not as a sex commodity. Second, by refusing the right to anyone over her body; by refusing to bear children, unless she wants them; by refusing to be a servant to God, the State, society, the husband, the family, etc., by making her life simpler, but deeper and richer. That is, by trying to learn the meaning and substance of life in all its complexities, by freeing herself from the fear of public opinion and public condemnation. Only that, and not the ballot, will set woman free, will maker her a force hitherto unknown in the world, a force for real love, for peace, for harmony; a force of divine fire, of life-giving; a creator of free men and women.

from Woman Suffrage- 1910 ~ Emma Goldman

When the world of man collapses in ruin, beauty will take over. The trees shall grow again where there were streets; the flowers will again cover the meadow that is now a dank field of hovels. That shall be the purpose of the Satanic master, to see the wild grass and the dense forest cover up all trace of the once great cities until nothing remains. ~ Anne Rice

Love, how often that word came up in books over and over again. If you had wealth and health, and beauty and talent ... you had nothing if you didn't have love. Love changed all that was ordinary into something giddy, powerful, drunken, enchanted. ~ V.C. Andrews

Elderly people are like plants. Whereas some go to seed, or to pot, others blossom in the most wonderful ways. I believe beauty competitions should be held only for people over seventy years of age. When we are young, we have the face and figure God gave us. We did nothing to earn our good looks. But as we get older, character becomes etched on our face. Beautiful old people are works of art. Like a white candle in a holy place, so it the beauty of an aged face. ~ James Simpson

What was the point in creating something that was so futile and so precious? everything beautiful was like that. a little bit of the true world. beauty said there was something more than just one fucking thing after another. time could rest for a moment, stop and that senseless motion. people thot beauty was bullshit, just a bandaide slapped over the abyss, but they couldnt be more wrong. beauty mattered, it was the only thing that fed you when everything turned to shit. ~ Janet Fitch

The newcomer stood well over six feet, as tall as any Warden. His hair was dark, the color of obsidian, and it reflected blue in the dim light. Lazy locks slipped over his forehead and curled just below his ears. Brows arched over golden eyes and his cheekbones were broad and high. He was attractive. Very attractive. Mind-bendingly beautiful, actually, but the sardonic twist to his full lips chilled his beauty. The black T-shirt stretched across his chest and flat stomach. A huge tattoo of a snake curled around his forearm, the tail disappearing under his sleeve and the diamond-shaped head rested on the top of his hand. He looked my age. Total crush material - if it wasn't for the fact that he had no soul. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

The electrical matter consists of particles extremely subtile, since it can permeate common matter, even the densest metals, with such ease and freedom as not to receive any perceptible resistance.
If anyone should doubt whether the electrical matter passes through the substance of bodies, or only over along their surfaces, a shock from an electrified large glass jar, taken through his own body, will probably convince him.
Electrical matter differs from common matter in this, that the parts of the latter mutually attract, those of the former mutually repel each other. ~ Benjamin Franklin

While the others chatted over their parcels Jean wrote her letter, and Jean could write delightful letters. She had a decided talent in that respect, and her correspondents all declared her letters to be things of beauty and joy forever. She ~ L.M. Montgomery

I have read my books by many lights, hoarding their beauty, their wit or wisdom against the dark days when I would have no book, nor a place to read. I have known hunger of the belly kind many times over, but I have known a worse hunger: the need to know and to learn. ~ Louis L'Amour

I'm Perfect at Feelings,

so I have no problem telling you

why you cried over the third lost

metal or the mousetrap. I knew

that orgasms weren't your fault

and that feeling of keeping solid

in yourself but wanting an ecstatic

black hole was just bad beauty.



Certain loves were perfect

in the daytime and had every

right to express carnally behind

the copy machine and there are

no hard feelings for the boozy

sodomy and sorry XX daisy chain,

whenever it felt right for you.



And when the moment of soft

levitation with erasing hands

made you feel dirty, like

the main person to think up love

in the first place, I knew that.

It's okay, you're an innocent

with the brilliance of an animal

stuffing yourself sick on a kill.

Don't, don't feel like the runt alien

on my ship: I get you. I know

the dimensions of your wishing

and losing and don't think you

a glutton with petty beefs. But

even I, who know your triggers,



your emblematic sacs of sad fury,

I understand why the farthest fat trees

sliver down with your disappointment

and why the big sense of the world,

wrong before you, shrugs but

somewhere grasps your spinning,

stunning, alone. But you have me. ~ Brenda Shaughnessy

Deep inside each human being is a spirit that hungers for movement and for growth. A live and burgeoning ball of energy, the spirit naturally moves, expands, gyrates - dances, even - purely by virtue of its desire for freedom. It craves beauty over entertainment, meaning over triviality, and knowledge over sensation. American society devotes few harbors to the trade of truth. Too often we sacrifice the pursuit of knowledge, distracted instead by sparkling material things. ~ Joe De Sena

All the way down the creek, perched in the windows of the office blocks and department stores, the iguanas watched them go past, their hard frozen heads jerking stiffly ... Without the reptiles, the lagoons and the creeks of office blocks half-submerged in the immense heat would have had a strange dream-like beauty, but the iguanas and basilisks brought the fantasy down to earth. As their seats in the one-time board-rooms indicated, the reptiles had taken over the city. Once again they were the dominant form of life. ~ J.G. Ballard

It had pale golden sands and clear cloudless blue skies. Rich quantities of palm trees and exotic flowers in dramatic red and fuchsia pink and bright yellow colors enhanced the islands beauty. The gardens were decorated with white Balinese furniture and the Japanese rock gardens with mythical dragons, lions, dinosaurs, elephants, nymphs, and man beasts (half men and half beast) in concrete large statutes and red bridges over goldfish ponds. A large loch housed swans and pink flamingos. ~ Annette J. Dunlea

He believes that a real work of art can be owned but should not be subject to capture; that it should radiate such authority, such bizarre but confident beauty (or unbeauty) that it can't be undone by even the most ludicrous sofas or side tables. A real work of art should rule the room, and the clients should call up not to complain about the art but to say that the art has helped them understand how the room is all a horrible mistake, can Peter suggest a designer to help them start over again. ~ Michael Cunningham

He came through the door howling, an axe arched high over his head. His eyes danced in madness, stuck fast on the two of them kissing, caught in their embrace and unaware of him. For a moment they went on, oblivious, untouched by the madman soon to come. It was a bright bubble of illusion on the eve of utter and complete madness.
She was the first to see. The image of her stepfather captured in Mateo's eyes, the furious glee of the Nazi's vengeance, sharp and mirrored in their emerald beauty. Soon those eyes were wide with terror and sorrow in a moment of unbidden regret caught at the end of such happiness. ~ Amanda M. Lyons

The only thing I knew about pickups was this: growing up, I always inwardly mocked the couples I saw who drove around in them. The girl would be sitting in the middle seat right next to the boy, and the boy's right arm would be around her shoulders, and his left arm would be on the wheel. I'm not sure why, but there was something about my golf course upbringing that had always caused me to recoil at this sight. Why is she sitting in the middle seat? I'd wonder. Why is it important that they press against each other as they drive down the road? Can't they wait until they get home? I looked at it as a sign of weakness--something pitiable. They need to get a life may have even crossed my mind once or twice, as if their specific brand of public affection was somehow directly harming me. But that's what happens to people who, by virtue of the geography of their childhood, are deprived of the opportunity to ride in pickup trucks. They become really, really judgmental about otherwise benign things.
Still, every now and then, as Marlboro Man showed me the beauty of the country in his white Ford F250, I couldn't help but wonder…had he been one of those boys in high school? I knew he'd had a serious girlfriend back in his teenage years. Julie. A beautiful girl and the love of his adolescent life, in the same way Kev had been mine. And I wondered: had Julie scooched over to the middle seat when Marlboro Man picked her up every Friday night? Had he hooked his right arm around her ne ~ Ree Drummond

Feeling downright giddy, which must be the lack of blood, Ethan flung his arm over his face and winced. Doubled over.

"What? What is it! Are you bleeding again?" Alexis reached for him.

He dropped his arm and smiled. "No. It's just that I was momentarily blinded by your beauty."

Her jaw dropped and she slapped his arm. "Idiot."

But as he laughed, he saw her struggle not to grin. ~ Erin McCarthy

The wonder is- given the errant nature of freedom and the burgeoning of texture in time-the wonder is that all the forms are not monsters, that there is beauty at all, grace gratuitous, pennies found, like mockingbird's free fall. Beauty itself is the fruit of the creator's exuberance that grew such a tangle, and the grotesques and horrors bloom from that same free growth, that intricate scramble and twine up and down the conditions of time.

This, then, is the extravagant landscape of the world, given, given with pizzazz, given in good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. ~ Annie Dillard

THE MOTH AND THE BUTTERFLY

When the sun rises over the horizon,
the butterfly emerges to dance in its brilliant light.
It flickers its colorful wings with euphoria,
To celebrate all the beauty found
in the majestic garden of life.

When the moon arrives in the darkness,
The moth appears at the disappearance of sunlight.
It flickers its pale wings as it shakes from its deep slumber,
To go search for food
To carry it through the night.

The moth prefers the moon and detests the sun,
while the butterfly loves the sun and hides from the moon.
Every living creature responds to light,
But depending on the amount of light you have inside,
Determines which lamp in the sky
Your heart will swoon.

Poetry by Suzy Kassem ~ Suzy Kassem

A dour-faced woman was working at a spinning wheel on a doorstep, and she frowned at Logen as he walked past with the unconscious apprentice over his shoulder. Logen smiled back at her. She was no beauty, that was sure, but it had been a very long time. The woman ducked into her house and kicked the door shut, leaving the wheel spinning. Logen sighed. The old magic was still there. ~ Joe Abercrombie

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart; -
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around -
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air -
Comes a still voice -
Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thine etern ~ William Cullen Bryant

The white marble surface was inlaid with semiprecious stones in seamless floral designs and in chaste calligraphy, shaped stones, jeweled stones, delicate and free-figured. The surface ran cool and smooth. Traceries of black Koranic figures covered the longer sides of the tomb with a smaller group on top. My hand moved slowly over the words, feeling for breaks between the inlay and marble, not to fault the craftsmen, of course, but only to find the human labor, the individual, in the wholeness and beauty of the tomb. ~ Don DeLillo

The liturgical year is the year that sets out to attune the life of the Christian to the life of Jesus, the Christ. It proposes, year after year, to immerse us over and over again into the sense and substance of the Christian life until, eventually we become what we say we are - followers of Jesus all the way to the heart of God ~ Joan D. Chittister

She was a triumph over ugliness, so often more beguiling than real beauty, if only because it contains paradox. ~ Truman Capote

No language can express the power, and beauty, and heroism, and majesty of a mother's love. It shrinks not where man cowers, and grows stronger where man faints, and over wastes of worldly fortunes sends the radiance of its quenchless fidelity like a star. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The peculiar predicament of the present-day self surely came to pass as a consequence of the disappointment of the high expectations of the self as it entered the age of science and technology. Dazzled by the overwhelming credentials of science, the beauty and elegance of the scientific method, the triumph of modern medicine over physical ailments, and the technological transformation of the very world itself, the self finds itself in the end disappointed by the failure of science and technique in those very sectors of life which had been its main source of ordinary satisfaction in past ages.

As John Cheever said, the main emotion of the adult Northeastern American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment.

Work is disappointing. In spite of all the talk about making work more creative and self-fulfilling, most people hate their jobs, and with good reason. Most work in modern technological societies is intolerably dull and repetitive.

Marriage and family life are disappointing. Even among defenders of traditional family values, e.g., Christians and Jews, a certain dreariness must be inferred, if only from the average time of TV viewing. Dreary as TV is, it is evidently not as dreary as Mom talking to Dad or the kids talking to either.

School is disappointing. If science is exciting and art is exhilarating, the schools and universities have achieved the not inconsiderable feat of rendering bot ~ Walker Percy

When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for membership, the Savior's condensed statement of the substance of both law and Gospel, 'Thou shalt love the lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and thy neighbor as thyself' that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul. ~ Abraham Lincoln

I can't wait for him to visit me again. He's just so handsome, don't you think?" she asked.
I paused. "Yeah, he's cute."
"Come on, America! You have to have noticed those eyes and his voice..."
"Except when he laughs!" Just remembering Maxon's laugh had me grinning. It was cute but awkward. He pushed his breaths out, and then made a jagged noise when he inhaled, almost like another laugh in itself.
"Yes, okay, he does have a funny laugh, but it's cute."
"Sure, if you like the lovable sound of an asthma attack in your ear every time you tell a joke."
Marlee lost it and doubled over in laughter.
"All right, all right," she said, coming up for air. "You have to think there's something attractive about him."
I opened my mouth and shut it two or three times. I was tempted to take another jab at Maxon, but I didn't want Marlee to see him in a negative light. So I thought about it.
What was attractive about Maxon?
"Well, when he lets his guard down, he's okay. Like when he just talks without checking his words or you catch him just looking at something like...like he's really looking for the beauty in it."
Marlee smiled, and I knew she'd seen that in him, too.
"And I like that he seems genuinely involved when he's there, you know? Like even though he's got a country to run and a thousand things to do, it's like he forgets it all when he's with you. He just dedicates himself to what's right in front of him. I like that.
Kiera Cass

The Lord is the refuge of all who seek refuge, the saviour of all who have to be saved. He is the Embodiment of Being-Awareness-Bliss (Sat-chit-ananda). He is now at Puttaparthi as the Effulgent Emperor over the region of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. ~ Sathya Sai Baba

God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me specifically into the story, and He put us in specifically with the sunsets in the rainstorms as though to say, Enjoy your place in My story, the very beauty of it means it's not about you, and in time that will give you comfort. ~ Donald Miller

Somehow grasping at vanishing snowflakes is like grasping at happiness: an act of possession that instantly gives way to nothing. It reminded me that there was a world outside this house: a world of vastness and unimaginable beauty; a world that for now, remained out of my reach. That memory had repeatedly returned to me over the years. It's as if the misery that surrounded that brief moment of freedom made it burn even brighter: a tiny light surrounded by darkness. ~ Alex Michaelides

This. This is exactly it.

"It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, that she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain aside - but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond - only a glimpse - and heard a note of unearthly music.

This moment came rarely - went swiftly, leaving her breathless with the inexpressible delight of it. She could never recall it - never summon it - never pretend it; but the wonder of it stayed with her for days. It never came twice with the same thing. Tonight the dark boughs against that far-off sky had given it. It had come with a high, wild note of wind in the night, with a shadow wave over a ripe field, with a grey bird lighting on her windowsill in a storm, with the singing of "Holy, holy, holy" in church, with a glimpse of the kitchen fire when she had come home on a dark autumn night, with the spirit-like blue of ice palms on a twilit pane, with a felicitous new word when she writing down a 'description' of something. And always when the flash came to her Emily felt that life was a wonderful, mysterious thing of persistent beauty. ~ L.M. Montgomery