She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes.
Lord Byron
Y
For she was beautiful -- her beauty made
The bright world dim, and everything beside
Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Y
Half light, half shade, She stood,
a sight to make an old man young.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Y
The dark night makes every woman beautiful.… In the dark all blemishes are hid, every fault overlooked, that hour makes any woman fair. . . . Do not let too strong a light come into your bedroom. There are in a Beauty a great many things which are enhanced by being seen only in a half-light.
Ovid - Ars Amatoria
Y
This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapour,
All falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth,
And what was expected of heaven or feared of hell, are now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it,
The response likewise ungovernable,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb,
Love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous,
Quivering jelly of love, white-blow and delirious juice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-fleshed day.
Walt Whitman - I Sing The Body Electric
Y
Body of my woman, I will live on through your marvellousness.
My thirst, my desire without end, my wavering road!
Dark river beds down which the eternal thirst is flowing,
And the fatigue is flowing, and the grief without shore.
Pablo Neruda
Y
It is hard, if not impossible, to snub a beautiful woman --
they remain beautiful and the snub recoils.
Winston Churchill
Y
It is better to be first with an ugly woman
than the hundredth with a beauty.
Pearl Buck
Y
There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.
Helena Rubinstein
Y
There is no such thing as an altogether
ugly woman -- nor altogether beautiful.
Michel Equem de Montaigne
Y
There are many lovely women, but no perfect ones.
Victor Hugo
Y
Beauty is never satisfied with beauty.
Helen gazing in her glass,
framed by lecherous curtains,
the enchanted bed,
knew herself beautiful.
Yet she felt life pass about her.
Kathleen Spivack - Myth-making
Y
I hope you have lost your good looks, for while they last, any fool can adore you, and the adoration of fools is bad for the soul. No, give me a ruined complexion and a lost figure and sixteen chins on a farmyard of crow's feet and an obvious wig. Then you shall see me come out strong.
George Bernard Shaw to Mrs Patrick Campbell
Y
Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
John Donne
Y
Grace was in all her steps, Heaven in her eyes,
in every gesture dignity and love.
John Milton
Y
Charm - it's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have.
J M Barrie - What Every Woman Knows
Y
Charmless beauty can impress me but it does not hold us for long.
It is like a bait that bobs without any hook.
Kapito V. 67
Y
There is only one kind of beauty that can transcend time, and many women possess it. It is, of course, beauty of the spirit that lights the eyes and transforms even a plain woman into a beautiful one. Women with wit, charm and warmth, who are interested in others and forget themselves, and who accept each stage of life gracefully, are the lasting beauties of this world-and the happiest.
Deirdre Budge
Y
True beauty is a message from within.
Raphaella Fox
Y
You can take no credit for beauty at sixteen. But if you are
beautiful at sixty, it will be your own soul's doing.
Marie Stopes
Y
An angel stood and met my gaze,
Through the low doorway of my tent;
The tent is struck, the vision stays;
I only know she came and went.
James Russell Lowell - She Came and Went
Y
My love in her attire doth show her wit,
It doth so well become her:
For every season she hath dressings fit,
For winter, spring, and summer.
No beauty she doth miss,
When all her robes are on;
But beauty's self she is,
When all her robes are gone.
Anonymous
Y
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
William Blake - Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Y
I know a man who, when he saw a woman of striking beauty, praised
the Creator for her. The sight of her lit within him the love of God.
St John Climacus - Quoted in, The New Christian Year
