Beautiful And Simple Quotes & Sayings

Among the many answers I have found, I believe love is the most beautiful and simple art that reflects the beauty of life. — Mabel Iam

Livia held her spatula as Blake whispered in her ear. "I see us just like this a hundred years from now, old and deaf. I'll be the luckiest man."
Emotion caught her - this was all she wanted. Simple, beautiful frittata moments with this man.
"Someday, Livia, I'll be man enough to buy the food," he continued. "I'll give you an oven. I'll try so hard. — Debra Anastasia

These truths may seem simple and self-apparent and the words easy to say, but the states of mind that you live in as you progress are beautiful beyond description. — Frederick Lenz

He could never know how beautiful he was in these moments, and Devin couldn't bring himself to say anything. What would he say? "I've always noticed you, but never thought I deserved someone like you?"
That wasn't right. It was cheesy and over-the-top, and still somehow inadequate to describe the maelstrom of emotions he felt when he was around Sam. Mike made it seem simple, but it wasn't. This wasn't like hooking up with a hot guy he'd met on the dance floor, it was Sam. The sweet, cerebral, quiet man who'd been his friend for nearly two years and somehow managed to sneak out of the friend box into this no man's land where every word, every gesture was a promise Devin wasn't sure he could keep. — Sara Winters

You look like Euler's equation, he murmured as he looked me up and down.
Nerd translation: Euler's equation is said to be the most perfect formula ever written. Simple but elegant. Beautiful. — Cynthia Hand

The elegance and functionality of the structure lay out before him, as beautiful and simple and effective as a leaf or a root cluster. To have something so much like the fruits of evolution, but designed by human minds, was — James S.A. Corey

First meditate, be blissful, then much love will happen of its own accord. Then being with others is beautiful and being alone is also beautiful. Then it is simple, too. You dont depend on others and you dont make others dependent on you. — Rajneesh

When you start looking at a problem and it seems really simple, you don't really understand the complexity of the problem. Then you get into the problem, and you see that it's really complicated, and you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That's sort of the middle, and that's where most people stop ... But the really great person will keep on going and find the key, the underlying principle of the problem - and come up with an elegant, really beautiful solution that works. — Steve Jobs

Every time I stand before a beautiful beach, its waves seem to whisper to me:
If you choose the simple things and find joy in nature's simple treasures,
life and living need not be so hard. — Psyche Roxas-Mendoza

I will tell you that I am a child of this century, a child of disbelief and doubt. I am that today and will remain so until the grave. How much terrible torture this thirst for faith has cost me and costs me even now, which is all the stronger in my soul the more arguments I can find against it. And yet, God sends me sometimes instants when I am completely calm; at those instants I love and feel loved by others, and it is at those instances that I have shaped for myself a Credo where everything is clear and sacred for me. This Credo is very simple, here it is: to believe that nothing is more beautiful, profound, sympathetic, reasonable, manly and more powerful than Christ. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It was simple reality - most competitive tennis players in my day were privileged, spoiled, entitled and white. Also, many of them were beautiful, fit, tan and of good stock - great big hair and white teeth and long legs. Then there were the rest of us. — Anne Lamott

In a simple and a peaceful cottage with a beautiful view, you will not be dreaming about the palaces or the heaven, because you already have a perfect thing! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The less you demand total fulfillment from relationships, the more you can appreciate them for the beautiful tapestries they are, in which absolute and relative, perfect and imperfect, infinite and finite are marvelously interwoven. You can stop fighting the shifting tides of relative love and learn to ride them instead. And you come to appreciate more fully the simple, ordinary heroism involved in opening to another person and forging real intimacy. — John Welwood

It's whatever you make of it, whatever you want to take away. Because like all of the best virtual realities, Disneyland interacts with its visitors. It becomes what we seek, and we contribute.
Disneyland can be as simple as a fun place to spend a couple of hours. Ride a roller coaster. Wave to Mickey. Eat an ice cream cone. Watch a parade.
And Disneyland can be deeply important, as sacred, as the irreplaceable home of our deepest values and dreams, everything that's best, bright and beautiful in the human spirit.
As always,Walt said it best 'Disneyland is a work of love. — Leslie Le Mon

Life is sometimes very complicated, but we can purposely learn to enjoy the simple yet powerful and beautiful things God has created! — Joyce Meyer

Let's be simple and calm,
Like brooks and trees,
And God will love us by making
Beautiful things like the trees and brooks for us,
And give us greenness in his spring,
And a river for us to go to when we end... — Alberto Caeiro

Respect the man of noble races other than your own, who carries out, in a different place, a combat parallel to yours
to ours. He is your ally. He is our ally, be he at the other end of the world.
Love all living things whose humble task is not opposed in any way to yours, to ours: men with simple hearts, honest, without vanity and malice, and all the animals, because they are beautiful, without exception and without exception indifferent to whatever "idea" there may be. Love them, and you will see the eternal in the glance of their eyes of jet, amber, or emerald. Love also the trees, the plants, the water that runs though the meadow and on to the sea without knowing where it goes; love the mountain, the desert, the forest, the immense sky, full of light or full of clouds; because all these exceed man and reveal the eternal to you. — Savitri Devi

Then I should have chosen a career for myself, I should have been a sluggard and a glutton, not a simple one, but for instance, one with sympathies for everything sublime and beautiful. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries. Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not seem to require so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of the soul in order to encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified; it has no reality, but is the pure and simple creation of the mind that invents it. In this field the soul has room enough to expand herself, to display all her boundless faculties, and all her beautiful and interesting extravagancies and absurdities. — Benjamin Franklin

You're not simple. You're complicated. You're difficult, challenging, beautiful, and you exhaust me. I love you, I do. You're my best friend, but I can't be with you. Not like that. Are you happy now? — Jessica Calla

His breath halted as he stared at her. Why hadn't he seen it before? The woman in his carriage, the one who'd emerged from his carriage like a Botticelli Venus, was beautiful.
Not in the way Cassandra had been beautiful, with glittering eyes and full, red lips. Cassandra's blond beauty might have faded in time, become handsomeness instead.
This woman's beauty was simple; well-defined cheekbones, a high forehead, slender nose, and stubborn chin. As the years passed she might grow even more attractive.
He suspected that her laugh would captivate, just as her tears would act like a razor to whomever brought them forth. Her smile had already charmed him, and now her silence incited his curiosity. Not about who she was and why she was here, but about more.
Who was the woman behind the smile? — Karen Ranney

Her little shoulders drove me mad; I hugged her and hugged her. And she loved it.
'I love love,' she said, closing her eyes. I promised her beautiful love. I gloated over her. Our stories were told; we subsided into silence and sweet anticipatory thoughts. It was as simple as that. You could have all your Peaches and Bettys and Marylous and Ritas and Camilles and Inezes in this world; this was my girl and my kind of girlsoul, and I told her that. — Jack Kerouac

I can express gratitude for the simple act of being able to breathe in and breathe out. I can move away from darkness and depression to light and hope. I can be happy with who I am, not what I should be, or what I might have been, or what someone tells me I must be. I am me, the true me; you are you, the true you - and that's good. That's beautiful. That's enough. — Janet Jackson

And when she's at the door, Mark stops her and he says, "I like you, very much. Just as you are."
It's ridiculous that I love this so much. It's so simple. It's not a witty, perfectly phrased, Ephron-y declaration by our charming, neurotic hero. It's so ... plain. But the idea is the most beautiful thing in the world. So, obviously, it makes me cry. — Mindy Kaling

Dear Livia McHugh
I'll be your husband. I'll be nothing but yours for the rest of forever. A single, simple day with you is something I'll refuse to take for granted. You have been the reason my heart beats since the moment I saw you, long before your hands actually had to do the job for me. Sleep in my arms. Wake up by my side. My beautiful love, be my wife and make me the happiest man. And I will never, ever lose count. Love always, Blake Hartt — Debra Anastasia

Tea is a work of art and needs a master hand to bring out its noblest qualities. We have good and bad tea, as we have good and bad paintings - generally the latter. There is no single recipe for making the perfect tea, as there are no rules for producing a Titian or a Sesson. Each preparation of the leaves has its individuality, its special affinity with water and heat, its own method of telling a story. The truly beautiful must always be in it. How much do we not suffer through the constant failure of society to recognise this simple and fundamental law of art and life; Lichilai, a Sung poet, has sadly remarked that there were three most deplorable things in the world: the spoiling of fine youths through false education, the degradation of fine art through vulgar admiration, and the utter waste of fine tea through incompetent manipulation. — Okakura Kakuzo

The rake himself lived up to Amy's expectations, however, when he came out to greet his guests. Tall, dark, handsome, and dressed with devastating informality in an open-necked shirt, sleeves rolled up to expose his arms like a laborer. No one could fair to be aware of a lithe body beneath the slight amount of clothing, and there was a wicked gleam in his eye even if he was supposed to have been tamed by matrimony.
Amy found it difficult to believe that the very ordinary woman by his side had achieved such a miracle. Lady Templemore was short and her gown was a simple green muslin. Her face was close to plain and her brown hair was gathered into a simple knot at the back.
But then she smiled at her guests and was beautiful. When she turned to her husband with a comment, she was dazzling, and the look in his eye showed he was tamed indeed, if devotion so heated could be called tame at all. — Jo Beverley

You ask me why I don't love you, but surely you must believe I am very fond of you and if to desire to possess a person wholly, to admire and honour that person deeply, and to seek to secure that person's happiness in every way is to "love" then perhaps my affection for you is a kind of love. I will tell you this that your soul seems to me to be the most beautiful and simple soul in the world and it may be because I am so conscious of this when I look at you that my love or affection for you loses much of its violence. — James Joyce

It is one of those simple but beautiful paradoxes of life: When a person feels that he is truly accepted by another, as he is, then he is freed to move from there and to begin to think about how he wants to change, how we wants to grow, how he can become different, how he might become more of what he is capable of being. — Thomas Gordon

I open the red leather box and examine the earrings. They are beautiful: simple yet elegant, just like the enchanting Miss Steele ... who left me this morning because I punished her ... because I pushed her too hard. I cradle my head once again. But she let me. She didn't stop me. She let me because she loves me. The thought is horrifying, and I dismiss it immediately. She can't. It's simple: no one can feel like that about me. Not if they know me. — E.L. James

Hawaiian music is beautiful and simple. — Bruno Mars

I was thirty years old and still living by the seat of my pants. I probably should have had my life together a little bit more by then. But the thing was, my friends all had these stressed-out lives, and they came to our place and it felt like we were just living this laid-back, beautiful, no-stress life. We made being poor look fun. — Chip Gaines

Acceptance is the most beautiful word in any language; this beautiful concept can only exist when you allow other people to be who they are and do not imprison them with your definition of what is right, proper, correct, or other limiting criteria. Decreasing the black and white in your thinking allows for an expansive area of gray, allowing you to live your life and others to live there life. Acceptance sets us all free! This simple change of thought creates a wonderful space for happiness to thrive. — David W. Earle

One way to think of it is in terms of maps and globes. Maps are easy. They're flat and predictable, easy to chart out a course. You can see the whole landscape in a simple, two-dimensional layout. However, as easy as they are, maps are unrealistic. The world isn't flat; it's not color coded and foldable and easily stored in your car's glove box. Life is too complex and beautiful to be captured on a map. It may help you see the big picture, but it does not help you understand the magnitude of the journey. — Jeff Goins

The Limoges set has brought us more joy in its absence than it ever did in our cupboards. Of course, we no longer own a set of china to pass down to our kids, but that's okay. Francois and I plan on giving our children something more valuable, the simple truth that the best way to go through life is to be a major donor of kindness. We'll tell them that it's possible to own a whole bunch of beautiful, valuable things and still be miserable. But sometimes just having a recipe for chocolate Bunt cake can make a person far, far happier. — Firoozeh Dumas

In our own time it has been seen ... that simple children, roughly brought up in the wilderness, have begun to draw by themselves, impelled by their own natural genius, instructed solely by the example of these beautiful paintings and sculptures of Nature. — Giorgio Vasari

Have you ever seen a stereogram?
The 'Truth' the Stereogram shows us is there in front of us. Training and work doesn't make us see it.
It's a point of view, a different way of looking at it.
When you see it you try to explain it to someone else and you
realize you can't.
It simple, super simple, yet almost impossible to explain.
There are 'techniques' to see them but some people may spend
years trying without results. Others can do it in seconds.
It doesn't change the fact that the image is there all the time in
front of us.
And it's Beautiful. — T.R. Cordon

But I think beautiful is simple and elegant, like a ballad with simple harmony. — John Fogerty

A piece of simple goodness
a letter gushing from the heart; a beautiful unstudied vindication of the worth and untiring sweetness of human nature
a record of the invulnerability of man, armed with high purpose, sanctified by truth. — Douglas William Jerrold

I've been blessed with two beautiful daughters. It is amazing how inadequate I can feel in being able to protect, teach, and take care of them. I'm not talking about a paranoid the-world-is-a-dangerous-place kind of way. I mean when they just give me a simple look or ask me something like "Where do stars comes from, Daddy?" I'm opened up in a way I had not thought possible. — Patrick Fabian

I'm not a financial expert. The Robin Hood tax seems to me a very simple and beautiful idea. I don't see the problem. — Bill Nighy

We bowed our heads together, and I prayed and then Nimmie prayed. Hers was a beautiful, simple prayer, beginning in faith and repentance and ending with joy and praise. — Janette Oke

I'd hear some beautiful Sade or Kings Of Convenience ballad remixed in a club, and I liked that these simple little songs seemed to be masquerading. They had put on superhero costumes, got all beefy, and here they were on the dance floor. I was interested in that. I can't make electronic beats, so I leave it to the pros like Boys Noize and Chromeo. — Feist

I believed all Angels had wings, that they never cried, that I would live a lifetimes and never see one up close, never know the glow of such skin, or know how intoxicating the feel of her soft lips pressing hard against mine, or how beautiful was a simple touch, and then you walked into my life and made me wonder why I had wasted so much time thinking about Angels. — Tonny K. Brown

It's very simple: I want his love. I need Christian Grey to love me. This is why I am so reticent about our relationship
because on some basic, fundamental level, I recognize within me a deep-seated compulsion to be loved and cherished. And because of his fifty shades, I am holding myself back. The BDSM is a distraction from the real issue. The sex is amazing, he's wealthy, he's beautiful, but this is all meaningless without his love, and the real heart-fail is that I don't know if he's capable of love. He doesn't even love himself. I recall his self-loathing, her love being the only form he found acceptable. Punished
whipped, beaten, whatever their relationship entailed
he feels undeserving of love. Why does he feel like that? How can he feel like that? His words haunt me: It's very hard to grow up in a perfect family when you're not perfect. I close my eyes, imagining his pain, and I can't begin to comprehend it. — E.L. James

He stood there watching for a moment, not able to move. Even with her mascara running down her face and her hair beginning to frizz, she was still by far the most beautiful girl he'd ever laid eyes on. It was quite simple, wasn't it? This great affection he had for Olivia was so overwhelming he chose to walk away instead of being brutally honest with himself. — Maria La Serra

A designer can mull over complicated designs for months. Then suddenly the simple, elegant, beautiful solution occurs to him. When it happens to you, it feels as if God is talking! And maybe He is. — Leo Frankowski

Our relationship is not simple or straightforward. It's not perfect the way young couples dream about. It's rough and flawed, but it's ours. And sometimes, if you get really lucky, something truly beautiful can come from the imperfections. — Aly Martinez

The only thing that makes sense is if the universe is beautiful and simple and elegant. — Antony Garrett Lisi

Every time we look at the clock, we must learn to feel a sense of urgency. We must learn to realize that "now" is happening and will very soon be gone. We must look at the digits on the display and be overcome with an urge to do something before those digits change. Before "now" slips through our fingers. We must look at the ink on the calendar and see an immediate opportunity to do something wonderful, incredible, or beautiful.
It's that simple. We need to change our thinking from "when the number changes" to "before the number changes". — Dan Pearce

We Greeks are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness. — Thucydides

...beautiful things often happen, and that the most beautiful things are often simple. — Chris Gethard

Tea ceremony is a way of worshipping the beautiful and the simple. All one's efforts are concentrated on trying to achieve perfection through the imperfect gestures of daily life. Its beauty consists in the respect with which it is performed. If a mere cup of tea can bring us closer to God, we should watch out for all the other dozens of opportunities that each ordinary day offers us. — Paulo Coelho

"Breathe deeply and concentrate on me. You are safe."
I take a shallow breath, but it chokes me.
"Look at me," Morpheus presses. I focus on his complexion, the color of snowy shadows beneath the eclipse of his wings, and he begins to sing. Not inside my mind, since the iron dome prevents it, but aloud ... a simple, sweet lullaby, carried on his beautiful voice.
"Little blossom so filled with dread, clear the nightmares from your head. Let me wipe away your tears, for in this place you have no fears." — A.G. Howard

To me the gospel is not a great mass of theological jargon. It is a simple and beautiful and logical thing, with one quiet truth following another in orderly sequence. I do not fret over the mysteries. I do not worry whether the heavenly gates swing or slide. I am only concerned that they open. — Gordon B. Hinckley

Traditional angling is to escape the noise and one-upmanship of modern angling in favour of something simple and beautiful. — Fennel Hudson

A simple idea. And the man that worked on it, Mike Gabriel, doubled the value. Beautiful job. I should say triple. We have others like that, but, unfortunately, shorts, which are my favorite approach, are economically of no value. — Joe Grant

Leaving him was less like leaving even the most simple of her friends in Flaw Valleys, and more like losing unfinished a manuscript, beautiful, absorbing and difficult, which she had long wanted to read. — Dorothy Dunnett

My advice to aspriring models is less is more, try not to do crazy hair and makeup, keep it simple but beautiful when you're trying to find an agency and get started. — Liris Crosse

The beautiful wooden board on a stand in my father's study. The gleaming ivory pieces. The stern king. The haughty queen. The noble knight. The pious bishop. And the game itself, the way each piece contributed its individual power to the whole. It was simple. It was complex. It was savage; it was elegant. It was a dance; it was a war. It was finite and eternal. It was life. — Rick Yancey

A beautiful sidenote is, once the toxins and dramas are removed, you purify your life. Simplify and purify. What better way to live your life? Simple and pure! — Tony Curl

History loved to lie, through simple distortion or complete fabrication. Lies were the cosmetics of history, and when history could not be beautiful, it preferred to be shocking. — Sean DeLauder

Do you love yourself? The test is simple. Do you look at others and see anything besides another beautiful human being? Do you see somebody who is more beautiful or less beautiful than you? If so, look down a little deeper and ask yourself why. It may be painful. The whys usually are. Do it anyway. — Dan Pearce

This was an act of love, pure and simple. And by taking her so slowly and gently, Merrick was wiping away all the earlier, bad memories she had of this act. Wiping them away and replacing them with beautiful memories, feelings of love and trust instead of hurt and terror and betrayal. There was no room for bad emotions here
there was only the bliss of being one with her man and it was the best feeling Elise had ever known. — Evangeline Anderson

Abby had a little trick that she used any time Red acted like a cranky old codger. She reminded herself of the day she had fallen in love with him. "It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon," she'd begin, and it would all come back to her - the newness of it, the whole new world magically opening before her at the moment when she first realized that this person that she'd barely noticed all these years was, in fact, a treasure. He was perfect, was how she'd put it to herself. And then that clear-eyed, calm-faced boy would shine forth from Red's sags and wrinkles, from his crumpled eyelids and hollowed cheeks and the two deep crevices bracketing his mouth and just his general obtuseness, his stubbornness, his infuriating belief that simple cold logic could solve all of life's problems, and she would feel unspeakably lucky to have ended up with him. — Anne Tyler

We maintain, therefore, that the first essential, the life and soul, so to speak, of Tragedy is the Plot; and that the Characters come second - compare the parallel in painting, where the most beautiful colours laid on without order will not give one the same pleasure as a simple black-and-white sketch of a portrait. — Aristotle.

I am flawed on many obvious levels, and truthfully, I erroneously report my zip code at least two out of every ten times. So why would I write about pursuing a rich understanding of the Bible? Isn't that material reserved for the upper echelon of the church hierarchy? The ones who have "arrived"? The answer is fundamental: The insights of the Bible are not reserved for pastors, their wives, and Billy Graham. Psalm 119:130, one of the most beautiful passages concerning God's Word, says, The unfolding of Your words gives light; It gives understanding to the simple. — Jen Hatmaker

The best things in science are both beautiful and simple, a fact that all too many teacher conceal from their students, by accident or design. — John Gribbin

Hoever dewlls on beauty tends to become beautiful; there will be a grace and charm to expressing itself through that person which no one can fail to recognize and appreciate. — Ernest Holmes

Rob had been her first lover, and she had been his. It was always amazing to her that when all her friends spoke of losing their virginity, they all said how awkward it was, but with Rob it had been beautiful. They had been so in love at seventeen and so confident of their future together that making love had been as natural to them as the simple act of breathing. — Samantha Chase

Life is simple and beautiful. — Debasish Mridha

Kutesosh gajair'is." It was a bare whisper.

"Such simple phrases. I destroy the enemy. I protect life. And my personal favorite - "

"Kun-kabynalti osu fuir'is."

"None shall die while I watch over them. The irony is so beautiful." Elkinsair wiped at his eyes. — Patrick Weekes

Textbook science is beautiful! Textbook science is comprehensible, unlike mere fascinating words that can never be truly beautiful. Elementary science textbooks describe simple theories, and simplicity is the core of scientific beauty. Fascinating words have no power, nor yet any meaning, without the math. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

You were great tonight, helping with Candice's wound and the funeral ceremony for Chaz ... such as it was."
"I only did what needed doing, and as for your friend's funeral, it was a beautiful good-bye you all gave him," she murmured. "Simple but pure. You honored him well, Kellan."
The phrase she used - one reserved for the solemnest occasions in Breed traditions - touched him in a way he couldn't express. Instead, he tipped her chin up on the edge of his hand and kissed her. Not the hungered kind of kiss that they'd been sharing each time they'd connected since her arrival back in his life a few days ago but a kiss shaped by tender caring and gratitude, by profound respect ... and, yes, love.
He loved this woman.
His woman. — Lara Adrian

The quality of the writing, really. Simple as that. Beautiful words. It's very nice as a singer to do great songs, which have wonderful lyrics and strong feelings underneath the song. — Bryan Ferry

In many cases a dull proof can be supplemented by a geometric analogue so simple and beautiful that the truth of a theorem is almost seen at a glance. — Martin Gardner

Some mathematics problems look simple, and you try them for a year or so, and then you try them for a hundred years, and it turns out that they're extremely hard to solve. There's no reason why these problems shouldn't be easy, and yet they turn out to be extremely intricate. [Fermat's] Last Theorem is the most beautiful example of this. — Andrew John Wiles

Science is beautiful when it makes simple explanations of phenomena or connections between different observations. Examples include the double helix in biology and the fundamental equations of physics. — Stephen Hawking

I have always loved simplicity. With you, everything's black and white, Richie had said, like an accusation; but the truth is that almost every murder case is, if not simple, capable of simplicity, and that this is not only necessary but breathtaking, that if there are miracles then this is one. In these rooms, the world's vast hissing tangle of shadows burns away, all its treacherous grays are honed to the stark purity of a bare blade, two-edged: cause and effect, good and evil. To me, these rooms are beautiful. I go into them the way a boxer goes into the ring: intent, invincible, home. — Tana French

Writing isn't about creating perfect characters. There's no such thing. It's about creating characters that are real; flawed
yet beautiful, in that they know they need another person. Needing someone else doesn't make them weak; if they believed all they needed was them self, they would be. A strong heroine isn't afraid to admit that a best friend, or soul mate, is exactly what they need at one moment or another. A strong heroine never stands alone. They stand tall; they believe in who they are. They are perfect in every human flaw, because as humans we are flawed. And in every flaw, I see the perfection of their souls. Writers breath life into simple words and create beings
flaws and all. — Cassandra Giovanni

It is my opinion that everything must be based on a simple idea. And it is my opinion that this idea, once we have finally discovered it, will be so compelling, so beautiful, that we will say to one another, yes, how could it have been any different. — John Archibald Wheeler

One of the things that's beautiful about New Orleans is how culturally rich we are and how well we have worked together. People call us a gumbo. It's really important that we get focused on the very simple notion that diversity is a strength, it's not a weakness. — Mitch Landrieu

It was beautiful not despite but because of the friction it has had to endure. It had been thrashed around, but instead of being destroyed, it was improved with every scratch and scrape, sculpted. In fact, the scuffs themselves are what gave it its quiet splendor; they are responsible for turning a simple piece of glass (which could have just as easily been trash) into a gem. It wouldn't be the same without the wear and tear; it wouldn't be something pretty enough to be turned into jewelry if it hadn't been damn near broken. I closed my fist around this tear-shaped gem and thought about my own uneven edges, my own abrasions, and things I have endured that have, instead of breaking me, completed me, prepared me for the next tumble. Its odd beauty was hard-won. It came from reinventing itself. From having risen to the top of the discard pile. Like a phoenix, from victim to victor. (325) — Wendy Blackburn

At the sight of Elizabeth Hamilton, all his previous concerns flew out of his mind. She was dressed in green, the color of new leaves, with her burnished blonde hair pulled back in a simple knot. Her blue eyes, more azure than the sky back home, turned in inquiry toward him. The color of her surroundings suited her. Nick had never seen a more elegant woman. Damn, she's beautiful. His tongue froze like lake water in a Montana winter, and his greeting died on his lips. — Debra Holland

The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable. — W. H. Auden

Heart as collapsed time, as a dug-up grave, as simple machine. Heart as big black bugs bleed blue blood. Heart as MI frozen as seen from airplane, everything still and white and beautiful. Heart as the Day the Music Died. Heart as love being made, as fucking, as a pleasantly haunted house. Heart as a dim memory of a dark room in which you're molded wetasscracked into a beanbag chair, fumbling for wetness. Come hither. Heart as a cunt's supposed to smell like tuna. Heart as the star of the sea. Heart as a pussy in permanent bloom. Heart as doxycycline. Heart as waxwings, as a fudge round, as the phone rings once and then stops. Heart as throw your hands in the air, throw your art at the stars, stutter and stare. Heart as a Stratocaster. Heart as Twin Reverb. Heart as I heart you so much. Heart as all that we thought we knew in the world disappears into vapor. Heart as the rest of your life times the weight of the world squared. — Bryan Charles

I love Bill Finn's stuff. It's so rewarding for an actor. It's conversational but intricate. He writes some beautiful, simple songs and melodies, but he also writes this cacophony for people. — Max Von Essen

She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illuminated her alone and left all else dark. She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white whose gentle voice was soft and sad. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness. Unfortunately the happiness is there. There is always the chance (about eight hundred and fifty to one) that another heart will come to mine. I can't help hoping, and keeping faith, and loving beauty. Quite frequently I am not so miserable as it would be wise to be. — T.H. White

One of the beautiful things about running is that it is direct and elegant. The formula is simple: put one foot in front of the other. It doesn't take much to figure out that if you want to improve sprint speed, you run faster. If you want to improve distance-running performance, you run farther. — Bernd Heinrich

He has presumably never observed a real wolf closely, otherwise he might have seen that animals too have no such things as unified souls; that the beautiful, taut frames of their bodies house a whole variety of aspirations and states of mind; that wolves suffer too, having dark depths within them. Oh no, human beings are always desperately mistaken and bound to suffer when they try to get 'back to nature'. Harry can never fully become a wolf again, and if he did he would realize that even wolves are not simple and primitive creatures but complex and many-sided. Wolves also have two and more than two souls in their wolves' breasts, and anyone desiring to be a wolf is guilty of the same kind of forgetfulness as the man who sings 'What bliss still to be a child!'1 — Hermann Hesse

She was a nice little girl, simple and true, and tremendously frightened of sex. I told her it was beautiful. I wanted to prove this to her. She let me prove it, but I was too impatient and proved nothing. — Jack Kerouac

Someone once said, 'God is simple, all else is complex.' The more attuned you become to God, the simpler and more beautiful your life becomes. — John Harricharan

If you are a warrior, decency means that you are not cheating anybody at all. You are not even about to cheat anybody. There is a sense of straightforwardness and simplicity. With setting-sun vision, or vision based on cowardice, straightforwardness is always a problem. If people have some story or news to tell somebody else, first of all they are either excited or disappointed. Then they begin to figure out how to tell their news. They develop a plan, which leads them completely away from simply telling it. By the time a person hears the news, it is not news at all, but opinion. It becomes a message of some kind, rather than fresh, straightforward news. Decency is the absence of strategy. It is of utmost importance to realize that the warrior's approach should be simple-minded sometimes, very simple and straightforward. That makes it very beautiful: you having nothing up your sleeve; therefore a sense of genuineness comes through. That is decency. — Chogyam Trungpa

Is there anything in the universe more beautiful and protective than the simple complexity of a spider's web? — E.B. White

Before the downpour, Al had thought Lou looked alluring in her pale pink T-shirt and simple flowered skirt. Her soft brown waves bounced around her shoulders with the humidity. She was simply beautiful. But with the addition of water, she evolved into a siren. Her thin cotton clothes clung to every curve. She slicked her hair away from her face, as if emerging from an enchanted lake. — Amy E. Reichert

I was a personality before I became a person - I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy and driven. — Barbra Streisand

Penny knew also she loved the country for its beauty. Cities could be magnificent, astounding, fantastic, but they were not consistently beautiful and simple. Penny liked uncomplicated beauty. — Dorothy Deming

He had never thought the question over clearly, but vaguely imagined that his wife had long suspected him of being unfaithful to her and was looking the other way. It even seemed to him that she, a worn-out, aged, no longer beautiful woman, not remarkable for anything, simple, merely a kind mother of a family, ought in all fairness to be indulgent. It turned out to be quite the opposite. — Leo Tolstoy

Bear was as beautiful as he was hard. He was as complex as he was simple. He was both the storm and the calm. The fear and the solace. The rage and the peace.
My life and my love. — T.M. Frazier