William Makepeace Thackeray Quotes

Son, if a maiden love thee, thou shalt appear handsome in her sight; she shall praise thine eyes, and the corners of thy mouth, yea, she shall admire thy hands. Though thou wert even as the orangutan yet shall she paint thee with fancies.

Sometimes it’s like people are a million times more beautiful to you in your mind. It’s like you see them through a special lens—but maybe if it’s how you see them,that’s how they really are.It’s like the whole tree falling in the forest thing.

Love is an optical illusion that makes you believe the object of your affection is the most beautiful person in the world.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

Beauty is that little something that fills the whole world, and is contained neither in a single straight nose, a long eyelash, nor a blue mountain. Some see it in a leg of mutton, others in a compound fracture; and to expect others to accept one's own definition of it is as absurd as to expect all humanity to use the same toilet-brush.

Faults are beauties in a lover's eye.

Spin is 'something is beautiful because we say it's beautiful.'

To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.

People are rarely as attractive in reality as they are in the eyes of the people who are in love with them. Which is, I suppose, as it should be.

Beautiful things, when taste is formed, are obviously and unaccountably beautiful.

If you tell an ugly woman that she is beautiful, you offer her the great homage of corrupting the concept of beauty.

The epithet beautiful is used by surgeons to describe operations which their patients describe as ghastly, by physicists to describe methods of measurement which leave sentimentalists cold, by lawyers to describe cases which ruin all the parties to them, and by lovers to describe the objects of their infatuation, however unattractive they may appear to the unaffected spectators.

The ideal woman which is in every man's mind is evoked by a word or phrase or the shape of her wrist, her hand. The most beautiful description of a woman is by understatement. Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what's beautiful, and it's best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.

To experience a thing as beautiful means: to experience it necessarily wrongly.

In the beautiful, man sets himself up as the standard of perfection; in select cases he worships himself in it. Man believes that the world itself is filled with beauty -he forgets that it is he who has created it. He alone has bestowed beauty upon the world -alas! only a very human, an all too human, beauty.

Beauty: "You called me beautiful last night." Beast: "You do not believe me then?" Beauty: "Well - no. Any number of mirrors have told me otherwise." Beast: "You will find no mirrors here, for I cannot bear them: nor any quiet water in ponds. And since I am the only one who sees you, why are you not then beautiful?

If you were blind you would hardly have fallen in love in the first place. But now, do you truly wish to see the beloved in the cold clarity of the visual apparatus? It may be in your better interest to throw a veil over the gaze, so as to keep her alive in her archetypal, goddesslike form.

There is no man on earth who can give a final judgment on what the most beautiful shape may be. Only God knows.

I think making things beautiful is important. But often what's first considered ugly is beautiful, too.

Liking is not always the child of beauty; but whatsoever is liked, to the liker is beautiful.

Beauty is where you find it.

Quite the ugliest face I ever saw was that of a woman whom the world called beautiful. Through its silver veil the evil and ungentle passions looked out, hideous and hateful. On the other hand, there are faces which the multitude, at first glance, pronounce homely, unattractive and such as "Nature fashions by the gross," which I always recognize with a warm heart-thrill. Not for the world would I have one feature changed; they please me as they are; they are hallowed by kind memories, and are beautiful through their associations.

Venus de Milo. To a child she is ugly. When a mind adjusts to thinking of her as a completeness, even though, by physiologic standards, incomplete, she is beautiful.

All is as beautiful as we think it.

Such as ne'er saw swans May think crows beautiful.