Moller, in his Essay on Architecture, taught that the building which was fitted accurately to answer its end would turn out to be beautiful, though beauty had not been intended. I find the like unity in human structures rather virulent and pervasive.
Christianity has the rancor of the sick at its very core-the instinct against the healthy, against health. Everything that is well-constructed, proud, gallant and, above all, beautiful gives offense to its ears and eyes.
Life will take its toll on all of us. We get injured, we get old. It's really sad to try to run away from these harsh realities of life. Looks are not everything. I am not going to look beautiful all the time.
To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be madeby the reception of beautiful sentiments.
The animal has its happiness in the senses, the human beings in their intellect, and the gods in spiritual contemplation. It is only to the soul that has attained to this contemplative state that the world really becomes beautiful.
There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.
For me, the different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden, or they are branches of the same majestic tree. Therefore, they are equally true, though being received and interpreted through human instruments equally imperfect.
The greed of gain has no time or limit to its capaciousness. Its one object is to produce and consume. It has pity neither for beautiful nature nor for living human beings. It is ruthlessly ready without a moment's hesitation to crush beauty and life.
Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing -to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden.
A man is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no luster as you turn it in your hand, until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors.
From the dome of St. Peter's one can see every notable object in Rome... He can see a panorama that is varied, extensive, beautiful to the eye, and more illustrious in history than any other in Europe.