Beautiful But Dangerous Quotes & Sayings

The woods that I loved as a child are entirely gone. The woods that I loved as a young adult are gone. The woods that most recently I walked in are not gone, but they're full of bicycle trails. And this is happening to the world, and I think it is very very dangerous for our future generations, those of us who believe that the world is not only necessary to us in its pristine state, but it is in itself an act of some kind of spiritual thing. I said once, and I think this is true, the world did not have to be beautiful to work. But it is. What does that mean?
[from 'A Thousand Mornings' With Poet Mary Oliver for NPR Books] — Mary Oliver

But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and more precious. — John Steinbeck

New York remains what it has always been : a city of ebb and flow, a city of constant shifts of population and economics, a city of virtually no rest. It is harsh, dirty, and dangerous, it is whimsical and fanciful, it is beautiful and soaring - it is not one or another of these things but all of them, all at once, and to fail to accept this paradox is to deny the reality of city existence. — Paul Goldberger

You can use reading as a food for the ego. It is very subtle. You can become knowledgeable; then it is dangerous and harmful. Then you are poisoning yourself, because knowledge is not knowing, knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom has nothing to do with knowledge. Wisdom can exist in total ignorance also. If you use reading just as a food for the mind, to increase your memory, then you are in a wrong direction. But reading can be used in a different way; then reading is as beautiful as anything else in life — Osho

Communion is at the heart of the mystery of our humanity. It means accepting the presence of another inside oneself, as well as accepting the reciprocal call to enter into another. Communion, which implies the security and insecurity of trust, is a constant struggle against all the powers of fear and selfishness in us, as well as the seemingly resilient human need to control another person. To a certain extent we lose control in our own lives when we are open to others. Communion of hearts is a beautiful but also a dangerous thing. Beautiful because it is a new form of liberation; it brings a new joy because we are no longer alone. We are close even if we are far away. Dangerous because letting down our inner barriers means that we can be easily hurt. Communion makes us vulnerable. — Jean Vanier

I will wait. For as long as it takes, I will wait, a fixed point in time, never moving on, never going back. Time will pass as if nothing at all; the months into years, the years into decades. And one day, one day out of thousands, I will see her again. Not as she will be, but as she once was. Beautiful and dangerous and mine. — Rebecca Harris

Beautiful but defeated and damaged. Damaged for the rest of her life and no amount of emotional mutilation will ever fully give her back her innocence. The girl is a ticking time bomb, a danger to herself and very possibly to others. I wasn't sure before, but now I know that she is more unstable than I ever could have imagined. And because she is so skilled at hiding it, not only from me but also from herself, she is more dangerous than I am. — J.A. Redmerski

But at times words can be a dangerous addition to music - they can pin it down. Words imply that the music is about what the words say, literally, and nothing more. If done poorly, they can destroy the pleasant ambiguity that constitutes much of the reason we love music. That ambiguity allows listeners to psychologically tailor a song to suit their needs, sensibilities, and situations, but words can limit that, too. There are plenty of beautiful tracks that I can't listen to because they've been "ruined" by bad words - my own and others. In Beyonce's song "Irreplaceable," she rhymes "minute" with "minute," and I cringe every time I hear it (partly because by that point I'm singing along). On my own song "Astronaut," I wrap up with the line "feel like I'm an astronaut," which seems like the dumbest metaphor for alienation ever. Ugh. — David Byrne

It was like caging a panther, beautiful and dangerous - if she kept him fed, she could tame him. And if she couldn't, he would devour her until there was nothing left but bones. — Staci Hart

I am certainly a devoted homosexual. Nobody could doubt my credentials. But I think, politically, we allowed this word gay to...It buggers up a nice word. It doesn't cover what we are. A lot of us are not very joyous. We have a hard life to live, against the current. Gay doesn't cover that - and worst of all, it labels us. They can dismiss you and put you off in a corner: "Oh, he's gay," and that's it. That's the end. You can no longer be central to what's going on. That's tragic....The world loses central contact with some of the most beautiful, sentient, sensitive and agitated, creative and emotional people in our society. The result is that a lot of people who operate centrally in our society can't let on that they're gay. It's tragic. It's very dangerous. — Scott Symons

Maitri can be translated as "love" or "loving kindness". Some Buddhist teachers prefer "loving kindness" as they find the word "love" too dangerous. But I prefer the word "love". Words sometimes get sick and we have to heal them. We have been using the word "love" to mean appetite or desire, as in "I love hamburgers". We have to use language more carefully. "Love" is a beautiful word; we have to restore its meaning. The word "maitri" has roots in the word mitra which means friend. In Buddhism, the primary meaning of love is friendship. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Suddenly, without any real change in her, she ceased to be beautiful. She looked merely like a woman who would have been dangerous a hundred years ago, and twenty years ago daring, but who today was just Grade B Hollywood. — Raymond Chandler

Love at first sight." It comes out as hardly more than a whisper, but the quietest words carry in this vast, echoing room. "I've always thought real love could only come later. After you both know each other, trust each other. After days, or weeks, or months spent together - learning to understand everything that isn't spoken out loud."

Paul smiles, which only makes his eyes look sadder. "One can grow into the other, my lady." His words are even quieter than mine. "I have known that to be true."

When we look at each other then, he silently admits something beautiful and dangerous. Does he see the same confession in my eyes? — Claudia Gray

The last lesson we must learn before we don our maester's chains. The glass candle is meant to represent truth and learning, rare and beautiful and fragile things. It is made in the shape of a candle to remind us that a maester must cast light wherever he serves, and it is sharp to remind us that knowledge can be dangerous. Wise men may grow arrogant in their wisdom, but a maester must always remain humble. The glass candle reminds us of that as well. Even after he has said his vow and donned his chain and gone forth to serve, a maester will think back on the darkness of his vigil and remember how nothing that he did could make the candle burn ... for even with knowledge, some things are not possible. — George R R Martin

But it's so beautiful, my castle; it's the most wonderful place to go home to. It sits on a cliff above the sea. There are steps down to the water, cut into the cliff. And balconies hanging over the cliff - you feel as if you'll fall if you lean too far. At night the sun goes down across the water, and the whole sky turns red and orange, and the sea to match it. Sometimes there are great fish out there, fish of impossible colors. They come to the surface and roll about - you can watch them from the balconies. And in winter the waves are high, and the wind'll knock you down. You can't go out to the balconies in winter. It's dangerous, and wild. — Kristin Cashore

I really love nature. I grew up in the country. But one of the things about nature is that it is beautiful but it's also very dangerous. — Maggie Stiefvater

Witches are the kind of more traditional, home and family, craft people - so they're the ones who are making things; crocheting shawls and things like that. But then they also have that slightly confident, dangerous, edge. I always see them as having very extreme hair, either amazingly beautiful straight hair or kind of wild. — Deborah Harkness

She is not conventionally beautiful or accomplished or elegant," Magnus continued, "but she is attractive. She does not even know how much, but every man she meets feels it and is drawn to her. The thing is, though, that most ladies feel drawn to her too. So it is not flirtation, you see. It is simply the extraordinary attractiveness of her character." -Slightly Dangerous (Bedwyn Saga #6) — Mary Balogh

Irrationality interests me more than anything: sometimes it's very dangerous, but it can be incredibly beautiful. — John Burnside

You understand," Silas says quietly - the words are just for me, but I know Scarlett hears - "I'm ... when I'm twenty-eight, Rosie. You know what this means. I'm dangerous, Rosie."
"You plan on loving me when you're twenty-eight?" I interrupt, uncertain if my question is serious or not.
Silas's eyes widen in surprise. He turns to look out the taxi window for a moment, and when his eyes meet mine again, there's a beautiful sincerity glistening in the gray-blue irises. "Rosie ... I love you. Now, when I'm twenty-eight, when I'm thirty-five ... I love you."
I exhale. "Okay, then."
"But I'm - "
I put a finger against his soft, bow-shaped lips. "Okay, then. — Jackson Pearce

If you walk into a room and one hundred people say, 'You are a lovely, beautiful person', who isn't going to be affected by that? But you have to tell yourself not to value that. You have to tell yourself - or at least I do - to not become accustomed to hearing applause in any way, because I think that's dangerous. — Joaquin Phoenix

A certain dervish tells a dream in the night-talking.

"I saw the sheikhs who are connected to Khidr. I asked them where I might get some daily food

without being bothered about earning it, so I could continue my devotions uninterrupted.

'Come to the mountains and eat wild fruit. Our benedictions have made its

bitterness sweet. That way your days will be free. 'I did as they said, and from the fruit

came a gift of speech that made my words exciting and spiritually transporting, valuable

to many. "This is dangerous,' I thought. 'Lord of the world, give me another, more

hidden gift.' I escaped. The beautiful speech left, and a joy came that I have

never known. I burst open like a pomegranate. 'If heaven is nothing but this feeling,

I have no further wish. — Jalaluddin Rumi

Forests to the [early] Northern European peoples were dangerous and generous, domestic and wild, beautiful and terrible. And the forests were the terrain out of which fairy stories, one of our earliest and most vital cultural forms, evolved. The mysterious secrets and silences, gifts and perils of the forest are both the background to and source of these tales ...
Forests are places where a person can get lost and also hide
and losing and hiding, of things and people, are central to European fairy stories in ways that are not true of similar stories in different geographies. Landscape informs the collective imagination as much as or more than it forms the individual psyche and its imagination, but this dimension is not something to which we always pay enough attention. — Sara Maitland

Seth laughed when he saw me.
"Hey," I said, poking him with my foot, "be nice."
"I think this is the first time I've ever seen you look anything less than ... " He paused, playing with word choice. "Well-planned."
"Why, you silver-tongued romantic devil. That is the look I usually go for. Other women go for sexy or chic or beautiful. But me? Well-planned all the way."
"You know what I mean. Besides, unplanned isn't a bad look for you. Not bad at all."
His voice sounded deliciously low and dangerous, and something ignited between us as we held each other's eyes. — Richelle Mead

But those eyes made him take her very seriously. Beautiful, yes. Delightful and enchanting, definitely. But absolutely dangerous. — India Drummond

It is terrifyingly beautiful," Julia said softly.
"Terrifying?"
"Nature at its most beautiful and most lethal. It is like standing on the edge of one of those lakes in Switzerland, so blue and so calm and so deep and so dangerous. You have the overwhelming urge to plunge in, even though you know the cold will kill you. This desert - your desert - it makes me want to walk into it and keep walking. You probably think I'm being ridiculously fanciful."
"I would not have put it in those words, but they are exactly how I feel about Qaryma. Terrifyingly beautiful. — Marguerite Kaye

The real you. I've seen her."
"What does she look like?"
Kingsley sighed and smiled. "She's beautiful. Dangerous. All eyes are on her when she walks into a room. Men fear her but not because she's the enemy. They fear her because she alone can show them who they really are. They fear this knowledge but will pay any price for it."
"Is she happy?" Elle asked.
"She's powerful. She can make her own happiness when she wants it. — Tiffany Reisz

Our emotions are often beautiful, but they can also be dangerous. They represent our spontaneity, and seem to speak to us of our freedom. — Tariq Ramadan

At least since the first petals of the counterculture bloomed across Europe and the United States in the 1960s, it has been fashionable to affirm that all religions are beautiful and all are true ... This is a lovely sentiment but it is dangerous, disrespectful, and untrue. — Stephen Prothero

In assembling this group of portraits of women, I'm aware that I'm treading on dangerous ground. When I was in college, I learned to be distrustful of men's depictions of women. I remember seeing Garry Winogrand's book Women Are Beautiful in the school library and being shocked that it hadn't been defaced for its blatant objectification of women. But looking back, maybe I was too harsh. Whether one photographs men or women, it is always a form of objectification. Whatever you say about Winogrand, his depiction was honest. — Alec Soth

There are three big things going for The Scorpio Races: first, it is set on a beautiful but wild island in the middle of the cold Atlantic Ocean. That would've seduced me as a teen reader. Second, It is full of beautiful but killer horses being trained for a dangerous race. Actually, that would've seduced me as a teen reader as well. At third it involves a very repressed love story with a very Mr. Darcy-like love interest. — Maggie Stiefvater

You are the most dangerous kind of female the world can ever know. You carry the seeds for your own destruction and the destruction of everyone who loves you. And a great many will love you for your beautiful face for your seductive body; but you will fail them all because you will believe they all fail you first. You are an idealist of the worst kind - the romantic idealist. Born to destroy and self destruct. — V.C. Andrews

Many people say he's plain- well, perhaps he is. But then, perhaps they've never seen the way his eyes flash when his face lights up with that smile of his. His smile- it's like a sudden flash of lightening across a stormy summer sky. Powerful, more than a little dangerous- but so wildly beautiful. And they have never heard the way his voice can roll, like the sea. Gentle at times, fierce at times, but always so deep and and sure. Perhaps they don't see it because he dosen't show them... or perhaps he dosen't show them because they wouldn't see. But I do. And so, I can never think him plain. ~H.D. — Anonymous

You're still beautiful and dangerous and incredible, and I'll keep telling you that for as long as it takes you to believe it. But right now, all I want to do is kiss you, except I'm terrified that if I try you might throw me off this balcony. — Julie Kagawa

Look at the fire. See the colors there? Blending together. Beautifully dangerous. Red blending into orange, orange blending into yellow. Beautiful and dangerous. Feel the heat, feel the attraction to it. Let the beauty overcome you. Let the fire in, but never let it take over. Love the fire. Love its heat. Let yourself revel in how the fire's warmth feels on your skin. Feel the fire, love the fire, but don't ever become the fire. Never let anyone extinguish your inner fire. Feed your fire and let it burn bright, let its heat warm your soul. — A.T.

The best stuff that Cicero wrote, in the first century in Rome, were the Philippics, a series of speeches that he delivered against Marc Antony, whom he thought was irreparably dismantling the Republic of Rome. Those speeches are powerful because they're not only really pointed but they're thrillingly beautiful - and that's precisely what made them dangerous: the fact that people wanted to read them. — John D'Agata

Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. My three [great teachers] did not tell - they catalyzed a burning desire to know. Under their influence, the horizons sprung wide and fear went away and the unknown became knowable. But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and very precious. — John Steinbeck

What's secretly in the water
of modern culture is that people
enter the world empty.
That's a very dangerous idea,
because if everybody's empty
than other people can get us
to do whatever they want
because there's nothing
in us to stand against it.

But if we came to do
something that's meaningful,
that involves giving and
making the world a more
beautiful, healthy, lively place,
then you become a difficult person
to move around and manipulate. — Michael Meade

What a strange place, I thought. If I look up everything is so clear and beautiful, and if I look down, everything is so dangerous and ugly. I wished I could keep my head in the sky, but the scorpions brought me back to reality. Or was the sky the reality? — Margot Berwin

World is beautiful but it is dangerous place to live, there is so much evil behind a normal person. — John Art

There were stalls nestled around the castle the way the lights were, not in rows but in odd spots, as if the stalls had grown there or alighted on random places like birds. There was one stall with ringing chimes that was set halfway up a ruined wall, so the customers had to climb sliding pieces of slate to get to it. There were more stalls set in the grassy hollows among the stones and nestled into the corners of the walls. One woman had actually turned a ruined wall into her stall, brightly colored jars arranged on the jagged, protruding shards of stone.
All through the fragments of a lost castle lit by magic moved the people of the Goblin Market. There was a man hanging up knives alongside wind chimes, which made dangerous and beautiful music as they rang together in the sea breeze. There was a boy who looked about twelve stirring something in a cauldron with a rich-smelling cloud handing over it, and bark cups ranged along his stall. — Sarah Rees Brennan

He was a tornado, changing every second, beautiful and dangerous and unpredictable. But she loved storms. Always had. — Sarah Noffke

I've always had mixed feelings. I don't know if it's any better or worse. I do think there's a really boring side of what's going on now - the over-repetitive, oversexualized thing. There's a lot of women that know better, that are really beautiful and sexy, but it's like: We know you can shake your ass in a G-string and wave it around, it's not that risque. It's not dangerous. It's very obvious and boring. — Neneh Cherry

Mom had told me about that - she called it a dangerous light. It's beautiful to look at, but it blinds people, she said, that kind of light. It's not good to be out in it. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

She seemed beautiful to me. Is that strange? I suppose it is. But there is a compelling beauty in the sight of someone seemingly so small and yet so dangerous. — Katherine Applegate

Her face was so beautiful it made me catch my breath, but her expression was stern and dangerous. — Rick Riordan

N. Martinez: Wildfires. That' why it smells so smoky. We had a dry winter, so the brush is like kindling
Eve: Are they different from regular fires?
N. Martinez: They're more unpredictable. They leap from one object to another, so it's hard to guess at their path or limit their destruction. Outside the city, they can roll over the landscape like a wave and hit you before you know it.
Eve: How do you stop them?
N. Martinez: You can't. Once they start, they choose their own path. All you can do is try to contain them until they burn themselves out. They're beautiful to watch, but they can be dangerous. — Michele Jaffe

I don't know if it's a forever deal, a sheep farm in the middle of nowhere. But I want to try, for Harry's sake. And I love it all when you're here. It's like you made it new for me. You--you are my forever deal."
There it was again, that dangerous, beautiful word. In Gaelic, wilder and lovelier still. "A-chaoidh."
"Yes, forever, Nic. A-chaoidh. — Harper Fox