Henry David Thoreau Quotes

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

Every thought which enters the mind, every word we utter, every deed we perform, makes its impression upon the inmost fiber of our being and the result of these impressions is our character. The study of books, of music, or of the fine arts is not essential to a lofty character. It rests with the worker whether a rude piece of marble shall be squared into a horse-block or carved into an Apollo, a Psyche, or a Venus di Milo. It is yours, if you choose, to develop a spiritual form more beautiful than any of these, instinct with immortal life, refulgent with all the glory of character.

Men and women make their own beauty or their own ugliness. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton speaks in one of his novels of a man "who was uglier than he had any business to be;" and, if we could but read it, every human being carries his life in his face, and is good-looking or the reverse as that life has been good or evil. On our features the fine chisels of thought and emotion are eternally at work.

He who is fair to look upon is good, and he who is good will soon be fair also.

Giving style” to one’s character - a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who see all the strengths and weaknesses of their own natures and then comprehend them in an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye.

Beauty is only skin deep; ugliness goes all the way through.

Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance. It is character which builds an existence out of circumstance. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels; one warehouses, another villas; bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks until the architect can make them something else.

In the performer's body, you don't care how you look. It doesn't matter if you're old, fat, beautiful, or ugly. It doesn't change anything. The only thing is your charisma and how you express your idea.

Good looks should never become a part of your internal character.

Nature does not bestow virtue; to be good is an art.

Great occasions rally great principles, and brace the mind to a lofty bearing, a bearing that is even above itself. But trials that make no occasion at all, leave it to show the goodness and beauty it has in its own disposition. And here precisely is the superhuman glory of Christ as a character, that He is just as perfect, exhibits just as great a spirit in little trials as in great ones.

Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.

The thing that makes makeup or clothing or fashion beautiful is the fact that the person wearing them loves themselves and loves being able to kind of use them as artistic tools. And so if I was to give one piece of advice, it would be to find beauty in your core first before you go out into the world and find it in other ways.

We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bone.

It is the duty of every one to strive to gain and deserve a good reputation.

Beauty matters. It is not just a subjective thing but a universal need of human beings. If we ignore this need we find ourselves in a spiritual desert.

The superior man honors his virtuous nature, and maintains constant inquiry and study, seeking to carry it out to its breadth and greatness, so as to omit none of the more exquisite and minute points which it embraces, and to raise it to its greatest height and brilliancy.

Human beings can be beautiful. If they are not beautiful it is entirely their own fault. It is what they do to themselves that makes them ugly.

Virtue may not always make a Face handsome, but Vice will certainly make it ugly.

A man is not to aim at innocence, any more than he is to aim at hair, but he is to keep it.

It is our choice of good or evil that determines our character, not our opinion about good or evil.

In the movie, you're moving, you have personality, you don't have to be great looking.

No man can make good during working hours who does the wrong thing outside of working hours.

My gift is that I'm not beautiful. My career was never about looks. It's about health and being in good shape.

Hast thou virtue? acquire also the graces and beauties of virtue.