Subjective Beauty Quotes

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

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.

It's like he would take a photograph of Sam, and the photograph would be beautiful. And he would think that the reason the photograph was beautiful was because of how he took it. If I took it, I would know that the only reason it's beautiful is because of Sam.

Beauty is not democratic; she reveals herself more to the few than to the many.

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

If you say my eyes are beautiful, it's because they are looking at you.

By means of beauty all beautiful things become beautiful.

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

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.

I only came to Paris with the intention of showing what I thought was strong and beautiful. It just so happened that my notion was different from everybody else's.

While truth is ultimately convergent, beauty is ultimately divergent. No one can and no one should tell anyone else what that person should consider beautiful.

There are women who have an indefinable charm in their faces which makes them beautiful to their intimates, but a cold stranger who tried to reason the matter out and find this beauty would fail.

I shall not find a painting more beautiful because the artist has painted a hawthorn in the foreground, though I know of nothing more beautiful than the hawthorn, for I wish to remain sincere and because I know that the beauty of a painting does not depend on the things represented in it. I shall not collect images of hawthorn. I do not venerate hawthorn, I go to see and smell it.

In all judgements by which we describe anything as beautiful, we allow no one to be of another opinion.

Do you love me because I'm beautiful, or am I beautiful because you love me?

It is impossible that beauty should ever distinctly appreciate itself.

Nothing's beautiful from every point of view.

Was she really beautiful? Was she at least what they call attractive? She was exasperation, she was torture.

External beauty is a bizarre thing to me.

The paintings of Francis Bacon to my eye are very beautiful. The paintings of Bosch or Goya are to my eye very beautiful. I've also stood in front of those same paintings with people who've said, 'let's get on to the Botticellis as soon as possible.' I have lingered, of course.

Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.

Whatever makes an impression on the heart seems lovely in the eye.

It is not beauty that endears, it's love that makes us see beauty.

I think the idea of the social construction of beauty - this idea that beauty is simply whatever culture or society says it is - is on the run. Of course, beauty does arise in a cultural context. No one ever denies that. But there's also a natural response people have to it.

It's been a growth process for each of us to understand why we find certain things beautiful. And if we do find something beautiful, we'll chase it, because you want to understand yourself and what your psyche is creating.