Perspectives on Ideas March 1, 2007

Babies
480 Suffice it to say, that the single ladies unanimously voted him [the baby] an angel, and that the married ones…agreed that he was decidedly the finest baby they had ever beheld—except their own. Dickens, Sketches by Boz.

Barber
92 I said, with withering irony, that it was sufficient to be skinned [while being shaved]—I declined to be scalped. Twain, Innocents Abroad.

Beauty
891 Gazing at this portrait, you saw what Rachael might have been, when Jacob deemed her worth the wooing seven years, and seven more.... Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

124 The beastly and the beautiful merged at one point, and it is that borderline I would like to fix, and I feel I fail to do so utterly. Nabokov, Lolita.

279 Kant begins by correlating design and beauty; the beautiful, he thinks, is anything which reveals symmetry and unity of structure, as if it had been designed by intelligence. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Kant.

474 Croce answers that beauty is the mental formation of an image (or a series of images) that catches the essence of the things perceived. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Benedetto Croce.

1103 I am warned by the ill fate of many philosophers not to attempt a definition of beauty.

1104 …all beauty must be organic…outside embellishment is deformity. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Beauty.

1106 The line of beauty is the result of perfect economy. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Beauty.

1108 Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Beauty.

1109 We love any forms, however ugly, from which great qualities shine. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Beauty.

940 Don Quixote to Sancho: Remember, Sancho…that there are two kinds of beauty: one of the soul and the other of the body…the soul displays its radiance in intelligence, in chastity, in good conduct in generosity, and in good breeding, and all these qualities may exist in an ugly man. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote of La Mancha. Part Two: 1615.

101 Is there beauty in Sodom? Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

1110 The radiance of the human form, though sometimes astonishing, is only a burst of beauty for a few years or a few months, at the perfection of youth, and in most, rapidly declines. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Beauty.

1110 Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Beauty.

18 Nothing is quite beautiful alone…. Emerson, Nature.

9 …man alone takes pleasure in the beauty of sensible objects for its own sake…. Aquinas, Summa Theologica. Adler and VanDoren, eds. Great Treasury of Western Thought.

67 The English method is to fill the mind with beauty; the Greek method was to set the mind to work. E. Hamilton. The Greek Way.