Beautiful From Inside Quotes & Sayings

In one of his darker moments, the irony started him laughing and he couldn't stop, and the sounds that came from him, before finally tapering into sobs, were so far from mirth they might have been the forced inversion of laughter-like a soul pulled inside out to reveal its rawest meats. — Laini Taylor

You do not know me if you think I'd hide. I'm in the light. I am free. Where is my beautiful woman? She runs from her heart. Yet you run through my veins. Your fire burns inside me. I run with you. — Imogen Maud

When the mouth is closed it looks very voluptuous, beautiful. But when it opens its jaws the tongue inside the mouth is more like a spear ... also very suggestive ... which penetrates the head with greater velocity, snagging bits of brain. From Beauty to the Beast. — H.R. Giger

Because when you have been shown mercy by your Father in Heaven, you cannot keep it in inside. People who have been given mercy want to hand it out freely and generously. Once you have known the indescribable joy of receiving love when you had expected judgment, there is no containing the lengths you will go to give it away. And so the life inclined toward mercy becomes a beautiful offering to God. In your great need, you can turn your aching heart toward the Father and ask for His mercy. From the riches of His lavish love, He will tenderly give all that you need. Humbled by such a gracious gift, your heart will long to share with others who need mercy too. And when the one who gives mercy remains in the presence of God, all the mercy required is continually being provided. — Angela Thomas

Some car had hit it after all, because it hadn't had the courage to honor its own correct instinct. And I began to cry because I had this thought about people, that they do this all the time, deny the wise voice inside them telling them the right thing to do because it is different. I remembered once seeing a tea party some little girls had set up outside, mismatched china, decorations of a plucked pansy blossom and a seashell and a shiny penny and a small circle of red berries and a fern, pressed wetly into the wooden table, the damp outline around it a beautiful bonus. They didn't consult the Martha Stewart guide for entertainment and gulp a martini before their guests arrived. They pulled ideas from their hearts and minds about the things that gave them pleasure, and they laid out an offering with loving intent. It was a small Garden of Eden, the occupants making something out of what they saw was theirs. Out of what they truly saw. — Elizabeth Berg

I don't care what color your hair is, if you're pale or tan, if you have makeup on or just woke up all I care about is that when I look at you, you always look back and see me. You're beautiful inside and out and if you wanted to tattoo all that pretty white skin from head to toe I would be honored to put it there for you but if not I'll take you all smooth and milky white any chance I get. — Jay Crownover

We have all the time in the world.' Love found a record. He laid it on the player. The music started again, scratchy from age, but so sweet and beautiful and deep.
Someday.
And there, in the darkness, Love and Death and the ones inside of them danced until the song was done.
And then, when all around them was silent and still, they disappeared. — Martha Brockenbrough

How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you. — Rainer Maria Rilke

I looked over at the dresser and saw a new issue of Zoobooks sitting there.

On the cover was an owl. I love owls. Owls are beautiful and fierce. There was an owl right there on the front. A close-up of its face. Two big black eyes, bulbous, shiny, and empty. A brown-and-black feathered face. And its beak. I didn't see its beak. What were those two things coming out of its neck?

I stepped closer.

And in the lower corner of the cover, in white all-caps sans-serif font: "SPIDERS." I looked back into that face, brown and black fur, two big black eyes, and more eyes, and pincers. And oh god.

I screamed. I screamed and I ran. I am still screaming and running from this, only on the inside now. — Joseph Fink

Mum said no one has ever called me by my first name so I've always assumed that even as a baby they could tell I wasn't an Arabella, a name with loops and flourishes in black-inked calligraphy; a name that contains within it girls called Bella or Bells or Belle - so many beautiful possibilities. No, from the start I was clearly a Beatrice, sensible and unembellished in Times New Roman, with no one hiding inside. — Rosamund Lupton

Because of the city's fragmentary, far-flung floor plan, accessible almost exclusively by car, there is no collective sense of community, no overarching sense of "we." ... It's a city of transplants ... Everyone moves to LA with plans not to stay. But then we stay. Because somewhere along the way, this Garden of Forking Freeways burrows itself inside our hardened, from-elsewhere hearts, and slowly, we begin to love the place we claimed to hate. Los Angeles is such a misunderstood city... It's a place that's impossible not to ridicule until you...fully appreciate all its endearing inconsistencies. It is ugly, and it is also beautiful. It is fast; it is slow. It is sexy, and it is also smart. — Lilibet Snellings

Do not always run away from the darkness! Remember the beautiful lakes which are hidden inside the dark caves! In the least expected places, there exist the most beautiful treasures! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I understood that expensive shirts looked better than cheap shirts. The fabric wasn't shiny, no - shiny would be cheap. But it glowed, like there was light coming through from the inside. It was a fucking beautiful shirt, is what I'm saying — Jennifer Egan

I live in the past. I take everything that has happened to me and arrange it. From a distance like that, it doesn't do any harm, you'd almost let yourself be caught in it. Our whole story is fairly beautiful. I give it a few prods and it makes a whole string of perfect moments. Then I close my eyes and try to imagine that I'm still living inside it. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Don't strive to be beautiful from the outside, strive to be beautiful from the inside. Surface beauty will fade through time and age, but beauty from the heart, however, will never fade. — Emily Eaton

From inside the tavern came the sounds of a fiddle being tuned, various plucks and tentative bowings, then a slow and groping attempt at Aura Lee, interrupted every few notes by unplanned squeaks and howls. Nevertheless the beautiful and familiar tune was impervious to poor performance, and Inman thought how painfully young it sounded, as if the pattern of its notes allowed no room to imagine a future clouded and tangled and diminished. — Charles Frazier

Criticizing people, winding them up, making idiots of them or fooling them doesn't make people with autism laugh. What makes us smile from the inside is seeing something beautiful, or a memory makes us laugh. This generally happens when there's nobody watching us. And at night, on our own, we might burst out laughing underneath the duvet, or roar with later in an empty room ... When we don't need to think about other people or anything else, that's when we wear our aural expressions. — Naoki Higashida

AN EMPTY GARLIC

"You miss the garden,
because you want a small fig from a random tree.
You don't meet the beautiful woman. You're joking with an old crone.
It makes me want to cry how she detains you,
stinking mouthed, with a hundred talons,
putting her head over the roof edge to call down,
tasteless fig, fold over fold, empty
as dry-rotten garlic.

She has you tight by the belt,
even though there's no flower and no milk inside her body.

Death will open your eyes
to what her face is: leather spine
of a black lizard. No more advice.

Let yourself be silently drawn
by the stronger pull of what you really love. — Jalaluddin Rumi

Never an illness, nor the absence
of grandeur, no,
nothing is able to kill the best in us,
that kindness, dear sir, we are afflicted with:
beautiful is the flower of man, his conduct,
and every door opens on the beautiful truth
and never hides treacherous whispers.
I always gained something from making myself better,
better than I am, better than I was,
that most subtle citation:
to recover some lost petal
of the sadness I inherited:
to search once more for the light that sings
inside of me, the unwavering light. — Pablo Neruda

I must sojourn once to the ballot-box before I die. I hear the ballot-box is a beautiful glass globe, so you can see all the votesas they go in. Now, the first time I vote I'll see if the woman's vote looks any different from the rest
if it makes any stir or commotion. If it don't inside, it need not outside. — Sojourner Truth

Elegance comes from being as beautiful inside as outside. — Coco Chanel

I had a beautiful dream the other day. I was coming home from work and you were standing behind white picket fence trimming roses. You were dressed up all in white. We saw each other from afar and smiled. We kissed, got inside our home where our two beautiful children were playing and waiting for us. We all hugged and I kissed your belly because that's where our third child was. You were pregnant. Than all got blurry and white... I was awake. I was sad because my dream has ended but I was happy at the same time because that was the most beautiful and purest dream I have ever had. — J. Zima

She raises her hands and places them on either side of my face. My skin burns beneath her touch. 'I think you're beautiful.'
I smile, thinking she's done. But she releases my face and places her palms on my chest, directly over my heart.
'You're beautiful right here,' she says.
I close my eyes, and the breath rushes from my lungs.
'I see the good in you, Dante,' Charlie continues, her words rolling together off her tongue. 'Even if you don't, I do. You have a good heart. You know how I know?'
I open my eyes. She's looking at me like nothing else in the world exists. Like the entire planet and all of mankind just vanished. She slowly wraps my hands inside her own as best she can and places them on her chest. 'Because I feel it here.' She taps our hands against her chest. 'I know you're good, Dante. Because I feel it inside of me. — Victoria Scott

Many a play is like a painted backdrop, something to be looked at from the front. An Ibsen play is like a black forest, somethingyou can enter, something you can walk about in. There you can lose yourself: you can lose yourself. And once inside, you find such wonderful glades, such beautiful, sunlit places. — Minnie Maddern Fiske

Brod's life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release ...
So she had to satisfy herself with the idea of love
loving the loving of things whose existence she didn't care at all about. Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for. It was not the world that was the great and saving lie, but her willingness to make it beautiful and fair, to live a once-removed life, in a world once-removed from the one in which everyone else seemed to exist. — Jonathan Safran Foer

He withdrew a cylinder of paper from inside his jacket's cuff and unrolled it so I could see the beautiful winding letters. The golden ink looked wet, — A.G. Howard

Was this what he believed, what he had always believed when I talked on and on about goodness? Was he making the violin say it? Was he deliberately creating those long, pure liquid notes to say that beauty meant nothing because it came from the dispair inside him, and it had nothing to do with the desair finally, because the despair wasn't beautiful, and a beauty then was a horrid irony? — Anne Rice

It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. How the artist captured the light, the details of my mother's dimples, the joy in my father's eyes, all through gentle strokes from his palette. The artist made me look alive when I felt lonely and grim inside. That's the way this man saw me. I decided then that that's what I wanted to do — Ellen Schreiber

People think the only time the earth is renewed is in spring. I find it's renewed around Christmastime when hard, old hearts are softened. When children's laughter drowns out anguish. When magic transforms the dull into something beautiful and sparkly. I find that Christmas time changes me ... from the inside out, and even for a moment fills me with youth and hope again. — Toni Sorenson

He lost himself. Blasted outside his body with his come, floated through into Finn, saw himself from the outside, from Finn's eyes, drenched with sweat, eyes squeezed shut, muscular body heaving, the cords on his neck popping out. He was beautiful. Inside Finn, he was beautiful. The revelation leveled him, sent himself back inside his lightning-struck body, and he collapsed, shuddering, into Finn's arms. — Anonymous

"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

This is what it is to love an artist: The moon is always rising above your house. The houses of your neighbors look dull and lacking in moonlight. But he is always going away from you. Inside his head there is always something more beautiful. — Sarah Ruhl

A gentle and a sweet, innocent soul can come from any place, any background. It is the nature of the soul and it cannot really change on the inside. A soul like this may come to believe the tauntings of the circumstances in life, and of the people who created those circumstances, with only memories of the true reflection of who it (the soul) really is. The downfall begins when a beautiful soul starts to believe that it is not beautiful. — C. JoyBell C.

It was one of those strange moments that came to him rarely, but never left. A moment that stamped itself on heart and brain, instantly recallable in every detail, for all of his life. There was no telling what made these moments different from any other, though he knew them when they came. He had seen sights more gruesome and more beautiful by far, and been left with no more than a fleeting muddle of their memory. But these
the still moments, as he called them to himself
they came with no warning, to print a random image of the most common things inside his brain, indelible. — Diana Gabaldon

I like Ryan Gosling from the inside. I think he's a beautiful person, and then if you didn't have anything, I'd still be his friend. — Ashton Moio

The radio was a beautiful thing. It was hodgepodge and patched up on the outside, but on the inside it was filled with voices, filled with people and music and ideas from away, from far away. Otto took a breath and turned it on. — Emma Hooper

And there it is, proof if proof were needed, that though God may mould the clay and fashion some of us hale, some strong, some beautiful, inside we make ourselves, from foolish things, breakable, fragile things: — Mark Lawrence

Love yourself for who you are. You are beautiful inside and out, and nobody can take that away from you. — Christina Milian

When I suddenly see myself in the depths of the mirror, I take fright. I can scarcely believe that I have limits, that I am outlined and defined. I feel myself to be dispersed in the atmosphere, thinking inside other creatures, living inside things beyond myself. When I suddenly see myself in the mirror, I am not startled because I find myself ugly or beautiful. I discover, in fact, that I possess another quality. When I haven't looked at myself for some time, I almost forget that I am human, I tend to forget my past, and I find myself with the same deliverance from purpose and conscience as something that is barely alive. I am also surprised to find as I gaze into the pale mirror with open eyes that there is so much in me beyond what is known, so much that remains ever silent. — Clarice Lispector

He could feel it immediately when his shoulder snapped - the intense pain of his bones cracking. His skin tightened, as if it could no long hold whatever was lurking inside him. The breath was sucked from his lungs like he was being crushed. His vision began to blur, and he had the sensation he was falling, even though he could feel the rock tearing at his flesh as his body seized on the ground. — Kami Garcia

As he watched her, Colin was visited by the strangest feeling, unfurling warm and buttery inside him. It was a sense of privilege and mute wonder, as though he'd witnessed one of those small, everyday miracles of spring. Like a licked-clean foal taking its first steps on wobbly legs. Or a new butterfly pushing scrunched, damp wings from a chrysalis.
Before his eyes, she'd transformed into a new creature. Still a bit awkward and uncertain, but undaunted. And well on her way to being beautiful.
Colin scratched his neck. He wished there were someone nearby he could turn to and say, 'Would you look at that? — Tessa Dare

My head, something happened to its insides. It was as if a storm at sea happened, but only for a moment, and only on the inside of my head. My ribcage, something definitely happened there. It was as if it unknotted itself from itself, like the hull of a ship hitting rock, giving way, and the ship that I was opened up inside me and in came the ocean.
He was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen in my life.
But he looked really like a girl.
She was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen in my life. — Ali Smith

The solid lines will be new plantings. The maze will be the centerpiece of the new garden. The pond on one side, the theater on another, so that from the theater one will look across the maze to the pond. There may be viewing places in the theater itself so that visitors may see the maze and those within it. It will be - The pencil finally broke through the paper at this point. He balled his fist, frustrated, the words bottled up inside him. Slim fingers covered his fist, cool and comforting. He looked up. "Beautiful," she said. "It will be beautiful." His breath seemed to stop in his lungs. Her eyes were so big, so earnest, so completely captivated by his trifling drawings, his esoteric work. — Elizabeth Hoyt

Eating Out Alone"
The loneliness inside me is a place,
Harvard where no one might always be someone.
When we're alone people we run from change
to the mysterious and beautiful
I am eating alone at a small white table,
visible, ignored ... the moment that tries the soul,
an explorer going blind in polar whiteness.
Yet everyone who is seated is a lay,,
or Paul Claudel, at the next table declaiming:
"L'Academie Groton, eh, c'est une ecole des cochons."
He soars from murdered English to killing French,
no word unheard, no sentence understood
a vocabulary to mortify Racine ...
the minotaur steaming in a maze of eloquence — Robert Lowell

You're sorry? I damn near drank myself to death, I could barely get out of bed, I shattered my phone into a million pieces on New Year's Eve to keep from calling you ... and you're sorry?"
I bit my lip and nodded, ashamed. I had no idea what he'd been through, and hearing his say the words made sharp pain twist inside my chest. "I'm so ... so sorry."
"You're forgiven," he said with a grin. "Don't ever do it again."
"I won't. I promise."
He flashed his dimple and shook his head. "I fucking love you. — Jamie McGuire

Every time i see a butterfly, it reminds me of how precious life can truly be. To be able to turn from a caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly and fly away so freely and gracefully wherever she may please, without no one in the world to tell her what to do. I wait for that special moment in time when I get to live freely, without no worries, pain or tears. I just want to be happy. I want the laughter in the air without all of the pain. One special day I'll get to live my life just like that beautiful butterfly. I will no longer feel blue inside. — Michelle Knight

True beauty comes from inside a person. If you feel beautiful, then you'll look beautiful to others no matter what's on the surface. — Kelly Oram

Instructions for freedom:
1. Life's metaphors are God's instructions.
2. You have just climbed up and above the roof, there is nothing between you and the Infinite; now, let go.
3. The day is ending, it's time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, let go.
4. Your wish for resolution was a prayer. You are being here is God's response, let go and watch the stars came out, in the inside and in the outside.
5. With all your heart ask for Grace and let go.
6. With all your heart forgive him, forgive yourself and let him go.
7. Let your intention be freedom from useless suffering then, let go.
8. Watch the heat of day pass into the cold night, let go.
9. When the Karma of a relationship is done, only Love remains. It's safe, let go.
10. When the past has past from you at last, let go.. then, climb down and begin the rest of your life with great joy. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The place Joanne is building inside [herself] has rooms for all of this. Not just rooms. Beautiful ones. For Karl and Jerry and Karen and Nate in his cowboy hat and the hot-tub guy and movie directors and old-lady healers and people trying to love their asses and people who think they're stupid for it. In these rooms, each thing that looks crazy or stupid will be like a drawing you give your mother, regarded with complete acceptance and put on the wall. Not because it is good but because it is trying to understand something. In these rooms, there will be understanding. In these rooms, each madness and stupidity will be unfolded from its knot and smoothed with loving hands until the true thing inside lies revealed. — Mary Gaitskill

When I was in Piazza di Spagna, in Rome, I watched (along with others) how many locals came to drink water from the fountain there. The people beside me said to each other "Oh my goodness, how disgusting, people just drink water from anywhere," while the whole time, I was thinking "Oh my goodness, how wonderful, people can drink water from anywhere." We can be in the exact same place, looking at the exact same thing, but see that thing in a completely different way. You can go around the world, and go to all the beautiful places, but never be happy, because happiness is something that you bring inside of you, it is not where you are or what you are looking at, but it is how you are and how you look at. — C. JoyBell C.

I feel you, Syn. I feel you about to explode," Furi groaned against his ear. His hands traveled down to Syn's ass. He pulled him in tight against him, making Syn grind hard inside him. Furi worked his hips from the bottom and Syn had no doubt Furi's prostate was being stimulated. If the noises coming from him weren't evidence enough, the cock trapped between them that had turned to steel definitely was. "You're gonna make me fuckin' come, Syn," Furi rasped out. Furi's cock was trapped between them and the way Furi controlled Syn's hips had his abs rubbing roughly over its length. Syn's orgasm was rising. He was having a hard time keeping his eyes on his lover's beautiful face, especially when Furi took one hand off Syn's ass and made a show of sexily sucking on one finger. "Oh — A.E. Via

In spite of my contempt for women, however, I found it impossible to be contemptuous of Ojosan. It seemed that reason was powerless in her presence. My love for her was close to piety. You may think it strange that I should use this word, with its religious connotation, to describe my feeling towards a woman. But even now I believe--and I believe it very strongly--that true love is not so far removed from religious faith. Whenever I saw Ojosan's face, I felt that I had myself become beautiful. Whenever I thought of her, I felt a new sense of dignity welling up inside me. If this incomprehensible thing that we call love can either bring out the sacred in man or, in its lowest form, merely excite one's bodily passions, then surely my love was of the highest kind. I am not saying that I was not like other men. I am made of flesh too. But my eyes which gazed at her, and my mind which held thoughts of her, were innocent of bodily desire. — Soseki Natsume

Shimamoto was in charge of the records. She'd take one from its jacket, place it carefully on the turntable without touching the grooves with her fingers, and, after making sure to brush the cartridge free of any dust with a tiny brush, lower the needle ever so gently onto the record. When the record was finished, she'd spray it and wipe it with a felt cloth. Finally she'd return the record to its jacket and its proper place on the shelf. Her father had taught her this procedure, and she followed his instructions with a terribly serious look on her face, her eyes narrowed, her breath held in check. Meanwhile, I was on the sofa, watching her every move. Only when the record was safely back on the shelf did she turn to me and give a little smile. And every time, this thought hit me: It wasn't a record she was handling. It was a fragile soul inside a glass bottle. — Haruki Murakami

She threw one leg over his and straddled his lap, then reached under herself and found him again.
He tore his mouth from hers. "Wait."
"No." She looked him frankly in the eyes. "I don't care if you spill at once. I need you inside me now."
His beautiful eyes widened and then narrowed. "You'll not always hold the reins, my lady."
She smiled sweetly. "Naturally not, but I do now. — Elizabeth Hoyt

The Indians are the Italians of Asia", Didier pronounced with a sage and mischievous grin. "It can be said, certainly, with equal justice, that the Italians are the Indians of Europe, but you do understand me, I think. There is so much Italian in the Indians, and so much Indians in the Italians. They are both people of the Madonna - they demand a goddess, even if the religion does not provide one. Every man in both countries is a singer when he is happy, and every woman is a dancer when she walks to the shop at the corner. For them, food is music inside the body, and music is food inside the heart. The Language of India and the language of Italy, they make every man a poet, and make something beautiful from every banalite. They are nations where love - amore, pyaar - makes a cavalier of a Borsalino on a street corner, and makes a princess of a peasant girl, if only for the second that her eyes meet yours. — Gregory David Roberts

Creativity is essentially a lonely art. An even lonelier struggle. To some a blessing. To others a curse. It is in reality the ability to reach inside yourself and drag forth from your very soul an idea. — Lou Dorfsman

He had a ruggedness about him that was appealing. Despite his groomed presentation, his chiseled face was shadowed with an attractive scruff of hair. His beautiful smile burned into me, melting me from the inside out while it exposed perfect white teeth embellished with alluring fangs. For a moment, I allowed myself to indulge in the idea of them sinking into my neck. Would it provoke the ecstasy I imagined or the horror I feared? — J.M. Northup

Looking at her always reminded me of a rose that was dripping blood. I always felt it was drawing all the life from inside. Just to look beautiful on the outside. — Akshay Vasu

In the middle of the afternoon, when the heat was at its worst, having accumulated around the concrete since early in the morning, I had ten minutes or so of respite in my tiny office. The walls there were blistering. I could scarcely breathe. But I fled there as if it had been a cool, wet, autumn day inside. I was not looking for relief from the heat so much as relief from the crowds. They licked away my being with their idiot tongues. — Michael McDowell

Nevertheless, this anger was inside him - I believe constantly. Like the house that was well ordered and yet falling apart from within, the man himself was calm, almost supernatural in his imperturbability, and yet prey to a roiling, unstoppable force of fury within. All his life he strove to avoid a confrontation with this force, nurturing a kind of automatic behavior that would allow him to pass to the side of it. Reliance on fixed routines freed him from the necessity of looking into himself when decisions had to be made; the cliche was always quick to come to his lips ("A beautiful baby. Good luck with it") instead of words he had gone out and looked for. All this tended to flatten him out as a personality. But at the same time, it was also what saved him, the thing that allowed him to live. To the extent that he was able to live — Paul Auster

I think you're beautiful," he says softly.
"Beauty fades," I choke out.
"Not when it comes from inside. — Kristen Callihan

It was a sunrise, a kid's sight of snowfall on a school morning. Hope. That all this can turn out okay, that somehow a tide this big and black can be turned back. Hope like a wildfire, thoughts of presents under a Christmas tree and a smell of cookies coming from a kitchen and a certain look in a girl's eyes that lights you up inside. That beautiful border between nightmare and morning when you realize that all of the monsters menacing you have evaporated like smoke, leaving behind only the warm blanket and the pale sunlight of a Saturday dawn. — David Wong

An Afternoon in the Stacks
Closing the book, I find I have left my head
inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open
their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound,
words adjusting themselves to their meaning.
Long passages open at successive pages. An echo,
continuous from the title onward, hums
behind me. From in here the world looms,
a jungle redeemed by these linked sentences
carved out when an author traveled and a reader
kept the way open. When this book ends
I will pull it inside-out like a sock
and throw it back in the library. But the rumor
of it will haunt all that follows in my life.
A candleflame in Tibet leans when I move. — William Stafford

The thing I remember most about space is the view from the spacewalk. When I was inside the space shuttle and looking through the window, you can see the earth and the stars, and it's very beautiful, but it's like looking at an aquarium, sort of. When you go outside and spacewalk, you become a scuba diver. — Michael J. Massimino

It was the way your sweet, soft hands wiped away my tears, and the way your body just curved into mine when you let me hold you. It all made me feel, for just an instant, that everything really was going to be all right. No one has ever comforted me like that ... except my mom." What the fuck? Did I just say all that out loud? I shook my head furiously from side to side as the room started spinning me like a Tilt-a-Whirl at the county fair back home.
Abby grabbed my shoulders to steady me. I blinked my eyes trying to focus on her blurry, but beautiful image. "Most of all, it's that I want someone like you to want me - just for me, not for Jake Slater the singer of Runaway Train." I smacked my hand hard against my chest. "For what's really inside me. — Katie Ashley

My eyes went straight to a soft woman who sat facing the wrong way at the bar top. Soft, because I knew if I were to touch her skin, it would feel like a peach, the kind of woman you could almost smell from inside the building. Instead of facing Andy, she had her back to him, keeping an eye on the door. That must be her. Her hair was exquisite. She was really the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. A golden crown of braids and curls complimented her sun-kissed skin. Her dress draped perfectly over her body, and in that moment, I needed her more than I needed air. — Chelsie Shakespeare

Inside, there was a bed, and upon the bed there was a woman. More beautiful was she even than the damask rose while her scent, drifting through the open window, was that of the night dew. Her hair was silken as the raven's wing. Quite naked, she lay, so still upon the bed, her eyes closed in reverie.

The young man looked first upon her breasts, where her hand rested. And upon each breast, there was a rosebud nipple. Upon each nipple there was a tip most tender. Upon each tip there was a milky drop.

Chin lifted, lips parted, she milked her maiden breast.

'What I would give to suckle at that teat,' thought he.

from 'Against Faithlessness' in Cautionary Tales — Emmanuelle De Maupassant

As soon as he had her safe again in his arms he broke down and kissed her. Helen was so stunned she stopped crying before she had a chance to start and nearly fell out of the sky. Still the
better flyer, Lucas caught her and supported her as they tumbled on the wind, holding and kissing each other as he tumbled on the wind, holding and kissing each other as he guided them safely back down to the catwalk. As their feet touched down, the light inside the lighthouse switched on
and projected the shadows of their embracing figures out onto the choppy waves of the ocean.
"I can't lose you," Lucas said, pulling his mouth away from hers. "That's why I didn't tell you the whole truth. I thought if you knew how bad it was you'd send me away. I didn't want you to give up hope. I can't do this if you give up on us."
(Starcrossed) — Josephine Angelini

I love being my age. I love getting older. What you lose in looks, you gain in wisdom. I might not be as physically beautiful on the outside today, but I'm much more beautiful on the inside. True beauty comes from inside ... — Delvene Delaney

Whenever I heard that languid, beautiful melody, those days came back to me. It wasn't what I'd characterize as a happy part of my life, living as I was, a balled-up mass of unfulfilled desires. I was much younger, much hungrier, much more alone. But I was myself, pared down to the essentials. I could feel each single note of music, each line I read, seep down deep inside me. My nerves were sharp as a blade, my eyes shining with a piercing light. And every time I heard that music, I recalled my eyes then, glaring back at me from a mirror. — Haruki Murakami

Getting a spark of inspiration to write is the best feeling in the world, no matter what time it is...I get a feeling on the inside that urges me to get up from whatever I am doing, grabbing that pen and writing down whatever my heart and mind tell me too... it's beautiful." — Sontia Levy-Mason

Don't judge from the outside. Like any beautiful rose has thorns ... the more a person appears nice on the outside, the more you should doubt the inside. — Gosho Aoyama

I like clothes that are fashionable but also have great messages for lifestyle, and 360 does just that - the sweaters are for women of all shapes and sizes and are designed to allow a woman to feel beautiful and chic from the inside out. — Katherine Schwarzenegger

There's an energy to these autumn nights that touches something primal inside of me. Something from long ago. From my childhood in Western Iowa. I think of high school football games and the stadium lights blazing down on the players. I smell ripening apples, and the sour reek of beer from keg parties in the cornfields. I feel the wind in my face as I ride in the bed of an old pickup truck down a country road at night, dust swirling red in the taillights and the entire span of my life yawning out ahead of me.

It's the beautiful thing about youth.

There's a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made, no paths committed to, and the road forking out ahead is pure, unlimited potential. — Blake Crouch

An example I often use to illustrate the reality of vanity, is this: look at the peacock; it's beautiful if you look at it from the front. But if you look at it from behind, you discover the truth ... Whoever gives in to such self-absorbed vanity has huge misery hiding inside them. — Pope Francis

You can play. You can play. You can play! Livia leaned against the wall, her aches and pains and shivering chill melting away now that Blake's playing had become something beautiful. She tilted her head back and opened her mouth, as if to drink the music. She couldn't imagine how he created it - it sounded as if three people must be playing. She heard bells, then the notes sounded like voices. So clearly the music sang to her: Blake loves Livia. Blake loves Livia. She stretched her arms out and dug her fingers into the rough, scratchy brick, trying to hug him from the outside of the church. She wiped tears from her cheeks. She wanted to run inside and see him creating. She wanted to see his strong arms and intuitive fingers crafting the notes. Blake's sounds enchanted her. — Debra Anastasia

I had on a beautiful red dress, but what I saw was even more valuable. I was strong. I was pure. I had genuine thoughts inside that no one could see, that no one could ever take away from me. I was like the wind.
-Lindo — Amy Tan

Gently Agatha touched her face in the mirror, glowing from inside.
A face no one recognized because it was so happy.
There could be no turning back now. The bread crumbs on the dark trail were gone. Instead, she had the truth to guide her. A truth greater than any magic.
I've been beautiful all along. — Soman Chainani

A plane flies overhead and inside it is a writer who has spent most of his life as a law clerk, even though he's always known deep down that he's a writer. For the first time, he's worked out what he wants to write, what the truth really is. He begs a napkin and a pen off the air hostess and he writes down the most beautiful sentence ever written, as the engine catches fire outside and the plane starts its plummet to the ground. It doesn't matter to him. It's the only sentence he's ever written and it is the last and no part of him cares. The sentence falls through the air with singed, black edges and comes to rest in a tree, in a park, miles away. One day, around ten years from now, an old widow of an astronaut will find it when a strong breeze finally blows it from its hiding place. She will read it and she will weep. — Pleasefindthis

Fear that I was very different from everyone else. Fear that deep down inside I was a shallow fraud, that after the revolution or after Jesus came down to straighten everything out, everyone from hippies to hard-hats would unfold and blossom into the beautiful people they were while I would remain a gnarled little wart in the corner, oozing bile and giving off putrid smells. — Mark Vonnegut

What's fascinating about D.C., the exteriors are these elaborate structures, this gorgeous architecture and beautiful stonework, and then you go inside and it's crap-looking - apart from the White House, which is beautiful. — Tony Hale

"You see, I do a little in this way myself," he explained; "here is my most prized piece." He took from his pocket a snuffbox, which looked to be of eighteenth-century workmanship. Inside the lid was an enamel picture of Leda and the Swan, and when a knob was pushed to and fro the swan thrust itself between Leda's legs, which jerked in mechanical ecstasy. A nasty toy, I thought, but Urky doted on it. "We single gentlemen like to have these things," he said. "What do you do, Darcourt? Of course we know that Hollier has his beautiful Maria."
To my astonishment Hollier blushed, but said nothing. His beautiful Maria? My Miss Theotoky, of New Testament Greek? I didn't like it at all. — Robertson Davies

He had his one life. In June 1942 he went to Lazarevo holding it in his hands. By the shores of the Kama, he found her gorgeous and restored, and not just restored to her original shining brilliance but enlarged and clarified. Light reflected off her, no matter which way she turned. They ran down to the almighty river. She never even looked back. She would never know what it meant to him, an unremitting sinner, after all the unsacred things he had seen and done, to have her innocence. He held her to him. He had dreamed of it too long, touching her. Dreamed of seeing her naked too long, beautiful, bare, ready for him. He was afraid to hurt her. He had never been with an untouched girl before; he wasn't sure if he was supposed to do something first. In the end, he did nothing first, but she baptized him with her body. There was no Alexander anymore; the man he knew had died and was reborn inside a perfect heart, given to him straight from God, to him and for him. — Paullina Simons

Inner beauty radiates from within, and there's nothing more beautiful than when a woman feels beautiful on the inside. — Erin Heatherton

Pain destroys the illusions of false, that is, elitist pleasures. It burns from the inside out. It, therefore, sensitizes us to what is truly beautiful in life. — Matthew Fox

I don't really enjoy experiencing pain. No one does. But we will become less human if we learn to detach ourselves from one another to the point that when we experience death of a beautiful being (our mothers, our fathers, our sisters, our brothers, our soul mates, our friends etc.) that it will not bother us that we will not feel. But see that's suppression. It will bother us somewhere deep inside. So, love someone. Hold them tight. Don't fear the loss. Fear the part of being too afraid to love someone. Love Everyone. It's inevitable: we all die. Thats the ugly part of life. But Love and being alive is so beautiful and so strong that the love, the memories stay even in death. Life is love, life is being alive to feel pain. The love the beautiful love always remains. Love. Life. Joy. Peace — Jill Telford

There are those who say that spiritual enlightenment is achieved through the denial of oneself; you must deny yourself many things, go and live in a mountaintop, never mingle with other people, talk to the birds..but I say to you, why should you dismantle your home? Where is the meaning in removing the bricks from your walls one by one? What is the purpose in uprooting your floors? Is there any significance in only allowing yourself a tin roof and a muddy bed? Why deny your house its structure? A truly enlightened soul is strong enough, is bright enough to live and shine through, even in a beautiful house! There is no need to ransack the house in order to see an inner beauty etched against a distraught surrounding. A bright and beautiful soul can shine forth even from inside an equally beautiful surrounding. — C. JoyBell C.

One time Allie and I skipped school and went to see this foreign film called Los Diablos, where these villagers found a glowing blue ball and peeled pieces off of it to see what was inside. Only the ball was really radioactive, and they all died from the poison. I think that's what happens when you look too deep inside for the truth. The poison comes out, and you die, even though you have beautiful glowing pieces of blue truth in your fingers. — Michael Thomas Ford

Beauty is the enemy . We try to conquer not feeling beautiful all our lives. It's a battle that can't be won. There's no definition of beauty. The only way to achieve beauty is to feel it from inside without breaking down into individual physical attributes — Miley Cyrus

There is something charming and peculiar about a beginning. You feel it, like the change of seasons, from winter to spring, from spring to summer. You feel it; the new blood pumping inside your veins. You feel it; a thousand butterflies fluttering around your fingers to help you fly. You feel it; on your lips, when you smile at the absurdities of life that suddenly make perfect sense.
You smile... Because in every beginning, there is a rebirth. Because in every beginning, there is a layer of you that you just discovered. A layer you forgot was buried in you all this time. You smile because you are reminded of the immensity of fate. You smile because suddenly you feel so small and you like it.
So let's begin my dear. This life is beautiful. — Malak El Halabi

What makes us smile from the inside is seeing something beautiful, or a memory that makes us laugh. This generally happens when there's nobody watching us. And at night, on our own, we might burst out laughing underneath the duvet, or roar with laughter in an empty room ... when we don't need to think about other people or anything else, that's when we wear our natural expressions. — Naoki Higashida

Sleeping Wrestler

You are a murderer
No you are not, but really a wrestler
Either way it's just the same
For from the ring of your entangled body
Clean as leather, lustful as a lily
Will nail me down
On your stout neck like a column, like a pillar of tendons
The thoughtful forehead
(In fact, it's thinking nothing)
When the forehead slowly moves and closes the heavy eyelids
Inside, a dark forest awakens
A forest of red parrots
Seven almonds and grape leaves
At the end of the forest a vine
Covers the house where two boys
Lie in each others arms: I'm one of them, you the other
In the house, melancholy and terrible anxiety
Outside the keyhole, a sunset
Dyed with the blood of the beautiful bullfighter Escamillo
Scorched by the sunset, headlong, headfirst
Falling, falling, a gymnast
If you're going to open your eyes, nows the time, wrestler — Mutsuo Takahashi

Let us consider Elfland as a great national park, a vast and beautiful place where a person goes by himself, on foot, to get in touch with reality in a special, private, profound fashion. But what happens when it is considered merely as a place to "get away to"?
Well, you know what has happened to Yosemite. Everybody comes, not with an ax and a box of matches, but in a trailer with a motorbike on the back and a motorboat on top and a butane stove, five aluminum folding chairs, and a transistor radio on the inside. They arrive totally encapsulated in a secondhand reality. And then they move on to Yellowstone, and it's just the same there, all trailers and transistors. They go from park to park, but they never really go anywhere; except when one of them who thinks that even the wildlife isn't real gets chewed up by a genuine, firsthand bear.
The same sort of thing seems to be happening to Elfland, lately. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Fallon," he whispers, moving his lips slowly across mine. "Thank you for this beautiful gift." As soon as his words brush over my mouth, he covers me in a deep kiss. My whole body tenses from the burst of pain that ripples through me as he pushes inside of me, but the perfection of the way we fit together makes the pain a mere inconvenience. It's beautiful. He's beautiful. And somehow, with the way he's looking down at me, I even believe I'm beautiful. He presses his mouth against my ear and whispers, "No combination of written words could ever do this moment justice. — Colleen Hoover

The flower of the ginger is superb and regal, but if we focus on nurturing the ginger plant to bloom we are unable to harvest its root. Enjoying the exquisite beauty of the plant will prevent us from unlocking its true potential - the nutrients secretly stored beyond the reach of the sun. Why care about trivial matters such as external beauty? What matters lies beneath the surface. What a waste! She is much more beautiful on the inside where she has so much more to give to the world. — Jamie Le Fay

Kindness is a lamp that we should always kindle in our heart. The warmth of it not only make us happy from inside and give light to others. But also makes the world a little more beautiful place everytime it lights the lamps in other hearts. — Akshay Vasu

Nature is a strong brand name. Everybody knew that. First thing, Nomenclature 101. Slap Natural on the package, you were golden. Those words on the package promise ease from metropolitan care, modern worries. And out here, if you opened things up, underneath the cellophane, what did you find inside? That fruit has splendid packaging, it has solid consumer awareness and is an animal favorite. Its seeds will be deposited in spoor miles away and its market dominance will increase. Splendid and beautiful petals are great advertising
the insects buzz and hop from all points every weekend to hit this flower-bed mall. Natural selection was market forces. In business, in the woods: what is necessary to the world will last. — Colson Whitehead

Satan so vehemently despises what Christ has done for mortals that one of his chief objectives is to make the clean feel unclean. Oh, how he desires to stain the beautiful bride of Christ. Satan can't make the bride do anything, so he does everything he can to get her to. How is this best accomplished? He tries to corrupt thoughts to manipulate feelings. Satan knows that the nature of humankind is to act out of how we feel rather than what we know. One of our most important defenses against satanic influence will be learning how to behave out of what we know is truth rather than what we feel. Satan's desire is to modify human behavior to accomplish his unholy purposes. Second Timothy 2:26 tells us that Satan's objective in taking people captive is to get them to do his will. If we have received Christ as our Savior, Satan is forced to work from the outside rather than the inside. Thus, he manipulates outside influences to affect the inside decision-makers of the heart and mind. — Beth Moore

Everyone wants to fall in love. But I think more people are in love with the theory of love. If you're looking in from the outside, it looks so beautiful. On the inside, it's scary because it can take over your life. It's the strongest emotion but also the darkest. It can put you on a high for days, but it can wrap an anchor around your feet and drown you in less than a minute. If everyone knew the truth no one would really ask for love. But when it drops into your life, you can only hope that you have enough strength to hang on. — Calia Read

Is it that the joy that comes from other people always risks sadness, because even when love doesn't fail, mortality enters in; is it that there is a place where sadness and joy are not distinct, where all emotion lies together, a sort of ocean into which the tributary streams of distinct emotions go, a faraway deep inside; is it that such sadness is only the side effect of art that describes the depths of our lives, and to see that described in all its potential for loneliness and pain is beautiful? — Rebecca Solnit