Illusion of Beauty Quotes

There is to me about this place a smell of rot, the smell of rot that ripe fruit makes. Nowhere, ever, have the hideous mechanics of birth and copulation and death -those monstrous upheavals of life that the Greeks call miasma, defilement- been so brutal or been painted up to look so pretty; have so many people put so much faith in lies and mutability and death death death.

Women always think that when they have my shoes, my dress, my hairdresser, my makeup, it will all work the same way. They do not conceive of the witchcraft that is needed. They do not know that I am not beautiful but that I only appear to be at certain moments.

My theory on Jenks: The guys look really good from afar, but once they come up to our table they are jacked hideous. It reminds me of the aquarium next door to Jenks, where it's just good to look. The moment you tap on the glass and make them come to you, it just freaks you out.

The future is always fairyland to the young. Life is like a beautiful and winding lane, on either side bright flowers, and beautiful butterflies and tempting fruits, which we scarcely pause to admire and to taste, so eager are we to hasten to an opening which we imagine will be more beautiful still. But by degrees, as we advance, the trees grow bleak; the flowers and butterflies fail, the fruits disappear, and we find we have arrived--to reach a desert waste.

Now I know the full power of evil. It makes ugliness seem beautiful and goodness seem ugly and weak.

What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for beauty, and never see the dawn!

That is the eternal folly of man. To be chasing after the sweet flesh, without realizing that it is simply a pretty cover for the bones.

A woman's charm is fifty percent illusion.

why does what was beautiful shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths?

It was terribly beautiful to Tess today, for since her eyes last fell upon it she had learnt that the serpent hisses where the sweet birds sing.

How vain painting is, exciting admiration by its resemblance to things of which we do not admire the originals.

It's very rare that people are exactly who they appear to be. Venice has a lot of that too, but the face of it is quite beautiful, interesting, and textured.

When one sees one of the romantic creatures before him he imagines he is looking at some holy being, so wonderful that its one breath could dissolve him in a sea of a thousand charms and delights; but if one looks into the soul -- it's nothing but a common crocodile.

There are women who are not beautiful but only look that way.

I don't really think I am the most beautiful woman in the world at all. If I can create some illusion to that effect - and it seems I have - then that is what spells success to me.

For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

Everything seems beautiful because you don't understand. Those flying fish, they're not leaping for joy, they're jumping in terror. Bigger fish want to eat them. That luminous water, it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies, the glitter of putrescence. There's no beauty here, only death and decay.

Even beauties can be unattractive. If you catch a beauty in the wrong light at the right time, forget it. I believe in low lights and trick mirrors. I believe in plastic surgery.

I'd hate to be really beautiful on telly and then have everyone go, 'It's all make-up and lighting.'

Beauty is almost no longer possible if it is not a lie.

The beauty myth moves for men as a mirage; its power lies in its ever-receding nature. When the gap is closed, the lover embraces only his own disillusion.

They can romanticize us so, mirrors, and that is their secret: what a subtle torture it would be to destroy all the mirrors in the world: where then could we look for reassurance of our identities?

Hoping to fashion a mirror, the lover doth polish the face of his beloved until he produces a skull.