subjectivity of beauty Quotes

Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.

Beauty is on one level pure surface, and on the other hand, it's the most complex subject that we can touch upon because it says everything about us as people. It's a subject we very quickly begin to argue about. I think that's so interesting.

Humans have a saying that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder", which basically means that if you think it's beautiful, then it is beautiful. The elfin version of this saying was composed by the great poet B.O Selecta, who said "Even the plainest of the plain shall deign to reign", which critics have always thought was a bit rhymey. The dwarf version of this maxim is "If it don't stink, marry it", which is slightly less romantic, but the general gist is the same.

There is none so blind as he who will not see. We must not close our minds, we must let our thoughts be free. For every hour that passes by, we know the world gets a little bit older, it's time to realize that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.

Beauty is, in some way, boring. Even if its concept changes through the ages... a beautiful object must always follow certain rules. A beautiful nose shouldn't be longer than that or shorter than that, on the contrary, an ugly nose can be as long as the one of Pinocchio, or as big as the trunk of an elephant, or like the beak of an eagle, and so ugliness is unpredictable, and offers an infinite range of possibility. Beauty is finite, ugliness is infinite like God.

What's the point of beauty if it's only seen by one?

I think there is beauty in everything. What 'normal' people would perceive as ugly, I can usually see something of beauty in it.

You have to be careful when you use beauty as a guide. There are many theories people didn't think were beautiful at the time but did find beautiful later—and vice versa. I think simplicity is a good guide: The more economical a theory, the better.

Beauty is a luster which love bestows to guile the eye. Therefore it may be said that only when the brain is without love will the eye look and see no beauty.

There are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness.

I submit that Zooey's face was close to being a wholly beautiful face. As such, it was of course vulnerable to the same variety of glibly undaunted and usually specious evaluations that any legitimate art object is. I think it just remains to be said that any one of a hundred everyday menaces — a car accident, a head cold, a lie before breakfast — could have disfigured or coarsened his bounteous good looks in a day or a second.

Not acknowledging that beauty is complex-that's the problem. I enjoy making it complex for people, because that's my world.

I never quite understand the way society decides who is beautiful and who is not. But an open face and a capacity for kindness always feel like reliable signifiers to me.

Ugliness is more inventive than beauty. Beauty always follows certain camps. I think it's more amusing - ugliness - than beauty.

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

Is beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so?

No theory changes what it is a theory about. Nothing is changed because we look at it, talk about it, or analyze it in a new way. Keats drank confusion to Newton for analyzing the rainbow, but the rainbow remained as beautiful as ever and became for many even more beautiful. Man has not changed because we look at him, talk about him, and analyze him scientifically. ... What does change is our chance of doing something about the subject of a theory. Newton's analysis of the light in a rainbow was a step in the direction of the laser.

He knew that the whole mystery of beauty can never be comprehended by the crowd, and that while clearness is a virtue of style, perfect explicitness is not a necessary virtue.

Indeed, there is no such thing as an altogether ugly woman — or altogether beautiful.

Take nothing for granted as beautiful or ugly.

Ugliness is an illusion, gentlemen. Like beauty. Like color. All depends on the light. The only reality is action.