Quotes & Sayings About Dark Beauty

And in the kisses, what deep sweetness! There are women's mouths that seem to ignite with love the breath that opens them. Whether they are reddened by blood richer than purple, or frozen by the pallor of agony, whether they are illuminated by the goodness of consent or darkened by the shadow of disdain, they always carry within them an enigma that disturbs men of intellect, and attracts them and captivates them. A constant discord between the expression of the lips and that of the eyes generates the mystery; it seems as if a duplicitous soul reveals itself there with a different beauty, happy and sad, cold and passionate, cruel and merciful, humble and proud, laughing and mocking; and the abiguity arouses discomfort in the spirit that takes pleasure in dark things. — Gabriele D'Annunzio

Recklessness is beauty
Ashbery says. When a car
door opens in the dark
at ninety miles an hour
what rushes in is beauty.
The wind's hymns are
inaudible, the words
chased off by scarecrows
from the blurry fields.
The murmuring heart
beatless all those moments
waiting to see if you
will live. — Keith Althaus

Then there were the people. Assamese, Jats, and Punjabis; people from Rajasthan, Bengal, and Tamil Nadu; from Pushkar, Cochin, and Konarak; warrior caste, Brahmin, and untouchable; Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Parsee, Jain, Animist; fair skin and dark, green eyes and golden brown and black; every different face and form of that extravagant variety, that incomparable beauty, India. — Gregory David Roberts

Represented purity, beauty, family, all of the things that had been taken from her. He was a glimmer of goodness in her dark fucking world, a warm spark she could hold, if only for a fleeting span of time. — Pepper Winters

Like the lotus flower, business blooms in the mud, and in the dark of night. The lotus is an amazing creation of God, because for all of its beauty, it is the sum total of work performed in a mess. It is also a creation that has the ability to create seeds in its habitat for a very long time without help from human hands. The lotus has the ability to survive beyond the mercurial nature of weather (storms, frost). The lotus is one strong, powerful, and resilient flower that blossoms in a substance (mud) that none of us would want to touch. — Robin Caldwell

He could be boastful in a way pleasantly at odds with his native fatalism, and his youthful stubbornness had a way of ameliorating into a sort of wounded dignity, which was centered in the darting passes of his deep-set, dark eyes. — Dan Lopez

You don't need a sad soul
to feel the beauty of a dead grave
Just stay with the pale moon
when darkness wants the night to be brave — Munia Khan

My ugly one, I love you for your waist of gold,
my beauty, I love you because of a wrinkle on your forehead,
love, I love you because you are clear and dark. — Pablo Neruda

The walls were hung with rich tapestries representing the Triumph of Beauty. A large press, inlaid with agate and lapis-lazuli, filled one corner, and facing the window stood a curiously wrought cabinet with lacquer panels of powdered and mosaiced gold, on which were placed some delicate goblets of Venetian glass, and a cup of dark-veined onyx. Pale poppies were broidered on the silk coverlet of the bed, as though they had fallen from the tired hands of sleep, and tall reeds of fluted ivory bare up the velvet canopy, from which great tufts of ostrich plumes sprang, like white foam, to the pallid silver of the fretted ceiling. A laughing Narcissus in green bronze held a polished mirror above its head. On the table stood a flat bowl of amethyst. — Oscar Wilde

Just because a flower will fade, does not mean we should neglect its beauty. — Dannika Dark

Hey Sydney, she said, giving me a small, crooked smile as she entered the room. Her flashing, dark eyes were friendly, but they were also assessing everything in the room, much as Eddie's gaze was. It was a guardian thing. Rose was about my height and dressed very casually in jeans and a red tank top. But, as always, there was something as exotic and dangerous about her beauty that made her stand out from everyone else. She was like a tropical flower in this dark, stuffy room. One that could kill you. — Richelle Mead

I had let her dab a little makeup on my face, but she'd freaked out when I asked her to cover up the pesky freckle at the end of my upper lip. Are you crazy? Don't ever cover your beauty mark! Why did people call it that? A freckle was not beautiful. It was a small, dark attention grabber. I hated the way everyone's eyes went to it when they talked to me. — Wendy Higgins

One day, you will stand at the summit of a figurative mountain and look back on your life's journey. And, to your utter amazement, you will see how your experiences with depression, dark and painful as they were, only added to the overall beauty of your life. — Seth Adam Smith

As the tall dark and handsome male star, Carey Grant always stands for male beauty and desirability, whether in a 30s screwball, a 40s film noir, or a 50s romantic comedy. He consequently turns around the orthodox gender between the one who looks and so desires, and the one who is looked at, and so is being desired. — Steven A. Cohen

An oceanic expanse of pre-dawn gray white below obscures a checkered grid of Saskatchewan, a snow plain nicked by the dark, unruly lines of woody swales. One might imagine that little is to be seen from a plane at night, but above the clouds the Milky Way is a dense, blazing arch. A full moon often lights the planet freshly, and patterns of human culture, artificially lit, are striking in ways not visible in daylight. One evening I saw the distinctive glows of cities around Delhi diffused like spiral galaxies in a continuous deck of stratus clouds far below us. In Algeria and on the Asian steppes, wind-whipped pennants of gas flared. The jungle burned in incandescent spots in Malaysia and Brazil. One clear evening at 20,000 feet over Manhattan, I could see, it seemed, every streetlight halfway to the end of Long Island. A summer lightning bolt unexpectedly revealed thousands of bright dots on the ink-black veld of the northern Transvaal: sheep. — Barry Lopez

What happened to your lip?" Ravenna said to him. "It looks sore."
Miss Feather's fingers darted to her mouth.
"Thank you for your kind concern, Miss Caulfield." His eyes were very dark blue and still rimmed with the longest lashed Ravenna had ever seen on a man. Beauty and virility and confidence and sheer privileged arrogance combined to remarkable effect. No wonder these silly girls stared. "It was bitten," he said.
"Oh, dear." Lady Penelope pouted sweetly. "That must have been alarming."
"Not terribly. I have been bitten by cats before." The corner of his mouth twitched. "This one," he said, turning his dark, laughing gaze upon Ravenna, "was otherwise charming."

-Ravenna, Vitor, & Lady Penelope — Katharine Ashe

Festivals and fasts are unhinged, traveling backward at a rate of ten days per year, attached to no season. Even Laylat ul Qadr, the holiest night in Ramadan, drifts
its precise date is unknown. The iconclasm laid down by Muhammed was absolute: you must resist attachment not only to painted images, but to natural ones. Ramadan, Muharram, the Eids; you associate no religious event with the tang of snow in the air, or spring thaw, or the advent of summer. God permeates these things
as the saying goes, Allah is beautiful, and He loves beauty
but they are transient. Forced to concentrate on the eternal, you begin to see, or think you see, the bones and sinews of the world beneath its seasonal flesh. The sun and moon become formidable clockwork. They are transient also, but hint at the dark planes that stretch beyond the earth in every direction, full of stars and dust, toward a retreating, incomprehensible edge — G. Willow Wilson

Kieran glanced at her with shimmering eyes. Neither looked quite human: The black eye was too dark, the silver too metallic. And yet the overall effect was haunting, inhumanly beautiful. — Cassandra Clare

One ravishing dark-haired beauty wearing leather pants and strategically applied electrical tape, stared hard at me and, when she saw me looking, licked her lips very, very slowly. She trailed a fingertip over her chin, down across her throat, and down over her sternum and gave me a smile so wicked that it's parents should have sent it to military school. — Jim Butcher

Time and task were both disorienting, for if you were to remove everything from our lives that depends on electricity to function, homes and offices would become no more than the chambers and passages of limestone caves- simple shelter from wind and rain, far less useful than the first homes at Plymouth Plantation or a wigwam. No way to keep out cold, or heat, for long. No way to preserve food, or to cook it. The things that define us, quiet as rock outcrops - the dumb screens and dials, the senseless clicks of on/off switches- without their purpose, they lose the measure of their beauty and we are left alone in the dark with countless useless things. — Jane Brox

If you want to know what true art is: Go outside on a clear night, wait until it gets very, very dark, then look up! You will see no rules of composition, no evidence of superior technique. Yet, you will be staring into the very face of pure, unadulterated beauty and wonder. That is the unattainable Ideal for which I must constantly strive. — Derek R. Audette

Whatever her name was, she was pretty. She had a thick, careless braid of chestnut hair, a quick smile, and dark, merry eyes. She wore some kind of a fuzzy lavender pullover, and when she crossed her legs and lifted her guitar onto her lap, she had an interesting way of tucking the foot of the bottom leg back under her chair that made Hector feel melty. He looked away in self-preservation. — Lynne Rae Perkins

Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused. — Alan Cohen

This girl, this impossibly sweet girl, was his present and his future, despite his past. Fate had to be smiling at him. He couldn't imagine life without this dark haired beauty. Those beautiful hazel eyes reached into his heart and took hold. — Shayna Varadeaux

Kate Winslet [for Steve Jobs movie, 2015] is the darling. If you wanna be the king you gotta kill the king. I think Charlotte [Rampling] is the dark horse on this one. No one does classic beauty better than her. — Bun B.

When at even-tide the child of want lies down, dirty and hungry, in his squalid home, and hears of prince and princess and fabled gold, then in the dark hovel lighted by its dim flickering candle, his mind springs free from its bonds of poverty and misery and walks in fresh beauty and glowing raiment, strong beyond all fear of hindrance, through that fairy realm where all is possible. — Rabindranath Tagore

For she was really too lovely
too formidably lovely. I was used by now to mere unadjectived loveliness, the kind that youth and spirits hang like a rosy veil over commonplace features, an average outline and a pointless merriment. But this was something calculated, accomplished, finished
and just a little worn. It frightened me with my first glimpse of the infinity of beauty and the multiplicity of her pit-falls. What! There were women who need not fear crow's-feet, were more beautiful for being pale, could let a silver hair or two show among the dark, and their eyes brood inwardly while they smiled and chatted? but then no young man was safe for a moment! But then the world I had hitherto known had been only a warm pink nursery, while this new one was a place of darkness, perils and enchantments ... — Edith Wharton

What a night it was! The jagged masses of heavy dark cloud were rolling at intervals from horizon to horizon, and thin white wreaths covered the stars. Through all the rush of the cloud river the moon swam, breasting the waves and disappearing again in the darkness.
I walked up and down, drinking in the beauty of the quiet earth and the changing sky. The night was absolutely silent. Nothing seemed to be abroad. There was no scurrying of rabbits, or twitter of the half-asleep birds. And though the clouds went sailing across the sky, the wind that drove them never came low enough to rustle the dead leaves in the woodland paths. Across the meadows I could see the church tower standing out black and grey against the sky. ("Man Size In Marble") — E. Nesbit

The fourth elf was younger than the others. This showed in the perfection of her skin, the agility and speed of her movements, and in the brightness of her dress. Her long silk garment was yellow and gold and green, and she wore a blue silk choker with a trailing silver scarf at her neck matching another at her waist. There was fire in her dark eyes which added to her overpowering beauty. — Ian Livingstone

In life, you will find two things. The quiet beauty of Darkness, and the bright songs of Light. The choice is yours to decide which will be you, and which will be your shadow. — Taylor Chackowsky

I see the eight of us in the Annex as if we were a patch of blue sky surrounded by menacing black clouds. The perfectly round spot on which we're standing is still safe, but the clouds are moving in on us, and the ring between us and the approaching danger is being pulled tighter and tighter. We're surrounded by darkness and danger, and in our desperate search for a way out we keep bumping into each other. We look at the fighting down below and the peace and beauty up above. In the meantime, we've been cut off by the dark mass of clouds, so that we can go neither up nor down. It looms before us like an impenetrable wall, trying to crush us, but not yet able to. I can only cry out and implore, Oh, ring, ring, open wide and let us out! — Anne Frank

Mostly, she sees the good in the world, the light where there is dark ... She sees beauty where we mostly pass it by. But tonight, she was heavy-hearted. I think sometimes she unfolds all her losses and stares at them, in the dark. — Susan Fletcher

I remember the stars that night. They were like salt against the sky, like someone spilled the shaker against very dark cloth. That mattered to me, their accidental beauty. — Kathleen Glasgow

Katy, that the whole world can be involved in this madness we call war, and all the while the flowers and the bees and the seasons keep on doing what they must, wise but never weary in their wait for humanity to come to its senses and remember the beauty of life? It is queer, but my love and longing for the world are always deepened by my absence from it; it's wondrous, don't you think, that a person can swing from despair to gleeful hunger, and that even during these dark days there is happiness to be found in the smallest things?) Anyway, — Kate Morton

An artist in my eyes, is someone who can lighten up a dark room. I have never and will never find difference between the pass from Pele to Carlos Alberto in the final of the World Cup in 1970 and the poetry of the young Rimbaud, who stretches cords from steeple to steeple and garlands from window to window. There is in each of these human manifestations an expression of beauty which touches us and gives us a feeling of eternity. — Eric Cantona

So few things we need to know.
And the old wisdoms shudder in us and grow slack.
Like renunciation. Like the melancholy beauty
of giving it all up. Like walking steadfast
in the rhythms, winter light and summer dark.
And the time for cutting furrows and the dance — Robert Hass

She gazed toward the marsh that grew thicker, deeper, greener with approaching summer. Mosquitoes whined in there, breeding in the dark water. Alligators slid through it, silent death. It was a place where snakes could slither and bogs could suck the shoe right off your foot.
And it was a place, she thought, that went bright and beautiful with the twinkling of fireflies, where wildflowers thrived in the shade and the stingy light. Where an eagle could soar like a king.
There was no beauty without risk. No life without it. — Nora Roberts

Between the dark, heavily laden treetops of the spreading chestnut trees could be seen the dark blue of the sky, full of stars, all solemn and golden, which extended their radiance unconcernedly into the distance. That was the nature of the stars. and the trees bore their buds and blossoms and scars for everyone to see, and whether it signified pleasure or pain, they accepted the strong will to live. flies that lived only for a day swarmed toward their death. every life had its radiance and beauty. i had insight into it all for a moment, understood it and found it good, and also found my life and sorrows good. — Hermann Hesse

Its quietness was the quietness of strength. And the eyes were those of one who had walked through many a dark valley without flinching. — Madeleine Brent

Thursday afternoon, the dark clouds closed in, and by Friday morning a heavy rain was falling. The mountain peaks were hazy sentinels, disappearing into misty fog that clung to the valley. — Danika Stone

Enough for me that you are beautiful: Beauty possessed diminishes. Better a dream of love Than love's dream broken; Better a look exchanged Than love's word spoken. Enough for me that you walk past, A firefly flashing in the dark. — Ruskin Bond

WEAN YOURSELF
Little by little, wean yourself.
This is the gist of what I have to say.
From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood,
move to an infant drinking milk,
to a child on solid food,
to a searcher after wisdom,
to a hunter of more invisible game.
Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo.
You might say, "The world outside is vast and intricate.
There are wheatfields and mountain passes,
and orchards in bloom.
At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight
the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding."
You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up
in the dark with eyes closed.
Listen to the answer.
There is no "other world."
I only know what I've experienced.
You must be hallucinating. — Rumi

Steam rising underneath a canopy of whispering, changing aspens; starlight in the clear, dark night, and wondrous beauty in every direction. If only all could feel this way, to be so captured and enthralled with autumn. — Donna Lynn Hope

Sometimes it is very dark. We cannot understand what we are doing. We do not see the web we are weaving. We are not able to discover any beauty, any possible good in our experience. Yet if we are faithful and fail not and faint not, we shall someday know that the most exquisite work of all our life was done in those days when it was so dark. — J.R. Miller

She sheltered her colors in the dark, where others were blind to see; I caught a glimpse of her lastly when she gave me a chance, before disappearing into the day. There was beauty locked in her that unfolded like an umbrella's claw, her true self that desired compassion, trust, protection and the potential to soar. But I missed to late, that what I wasn't looking for, when she left her reasons in the rain. — Anthony Liccione

The proud tower built up through the great age of European civilization was an edifice of grandeur and passion, of riches and beauty and dark cellars. Its inhabitants lived, as compared to a later time, with more self-reliance, more confidence, more hope; greater magnificence, extravagance and elegance; more careless ease, more gaiety, more pleasure in each other's company and conversation, more injustice and hypocrisy, more misery and want, more sentiment including false sentiment, less sufferance of mediocrity, more dignity in work, more delight in nature, more zest. The Old World had much that has since been lost, whatever may have been gained. Looking back on it from 1915, Emile Verhaeren, the Belgian Socialist poet, dedicated his pages, With emotion, to the man I used to be. — Barbara W. Tuchman

They hung over the town, muted red, dark-pink, surrounded by every conceivable nuance of gray. The setting was wild and beautiful. Actually everyone should be in the streets, I thought, cars should be stopping, doors should be opened and drivers and passengers emerging with heads raised and eyes sparkling with curiosity and a craving for beauty, for what was it that was going on above our heads? However, a few glances at most were cast upward, perhaps followed by isolated comments about how beautiful the evening was, for sights like this were not exceptional, on the contrary, hardly a day passed without the sky being filled with fantastic cloud formations, each and every one illuminated in unique, never-to-be-repeated ways, and since what you see every day is what you never see, we lived our lives under the constantly changing sky without sparing it a glance or a thought. — Karl Ove Knausgard

It's natural. Nature is dark and light, birth and death. Everything and its opposite. And in nature there are predators and prey. The hunters and the hunted. The heartbreakers and the heartbroken. The beautiful thing is that Nature lets us choose which we want to be, most people never make the choice though because they don't even know they have it. — Lynn Weingarten

One day in May, the whiteness in Milo's brain turns into that of a flock of Canadian geese that fills the entire sky. Pan to the young man staring up at them. Clinging to his arm is a pert and pretty, dark-haired girl by the name of Viviane, also looking up. Their mouths are open in amazement. Milo recites a few lines from "The Wild Swans at Coole." De trees are in deir autumn beauty, De woodland paths are dry, Under de October twilight de water Mirrors a still sky; Upon de brimming water among de stones Are nine-and-fifty swans. Viviane looks at him adoringly. "Sounds beautiful!" she says. "Who's it by?" "Yeats." "Never heard of him. — Nancy Huston

Your hair," repeated Dimitri. His eyes were wide, almost awestruck. "Your hair is beautiful."
I didn't think so, not in its current state. of course, considering we were in a dark alley filled with bodies, the choices were kind of limited. "You see? You're not one of them. Strigoi don't see beauty. Only death. You found something beautiful. One thing that's beautiful."
Hesitantly, nervously, he ran his fingers along the strands I'd touched earlier. "But is it enough?"
"It is for now." I pressed a kiss to his forehead and helped him stand. "It is for now. — Richelle Mead

Ancient one sleeping, waiting to rise
When earth's power bleeds sacred red
The mark strikes true; Queen Tsi Sgili will devise
He shall be washed from his entombing bed
Through the hand of the dead he is free
Terrible beauty, monstrous sight
Ruled again they shall be
Women shall kneel to his dark might
Kalona's song sounds sweet
As we slaughter with cold heat — Kristin Cast

Blackberry Beauty has all eyes on her.
She slowly raises her head and smiles at the onlookers.
Her walk is still graceful and delicate.
Her voice is still a whisper.

She says, "I am the beautiful Blackberry. I was made to be way too dark because I am ripe. My beauty comes from my blackberry skin and your ugliness comes from your unripe ones. — Sandra Proto

Dark and light. Horror and beauty. Everything is extremes. — Sarah Pinborough

The inability of Americans to value intellect is, to me, maddening. If someone possesses physical beauty they will not be cloistered or hidden in dark shadows. No, they are expected to be a source of pleasing scenery to others. We are not frightened in this country by beauty. We celebrate it, as we should. But what about beautiful brains, the kind that create amazing worlds out of nothing but thoughts, that can find a way to intricately bond elements of our lives that common wisdom tells us are inert? Why should anyone hide this intellect ever? No. Fuck boring financiers like Warren Buffett...there is no such thing as unnecessary beauty, physical or intellectual. — Stuart Rojstaczer

Your silent thoughts are like the roots of a plant. They remain hidden in the dark recesses of the earth, but from them stems the whole plant
its life and form, its strength and beauty. From them and through them the plant lives and dies. So, too, your thoughts, although hidden, are your real, vital force. — Lawrence G. Lovasik

Child, think not of those things, those dark possibilities. Your father and brothers are here with you today. Lavain will tug at your braids, Tirry will sing you songs, and your father will see his wife's beauty in you. Savor their love today. And it will never leave you. — Lisa Ann Sandell

We probably ought to be careful about deciding we're feeling offended; it can get old after a while. We become offended in all the ways God isn't. The seat of offendedness (like the seat of judgment) can be a real tricky spot to occupy. Before we know it, it can become a twenty-four-hour-a-day job. It becomes all we're known for, and when we're all caught up in all the things we're against, we forget the beauty of the things we're supposed to be for. We forget what the kingdom of God looks like and all the wonderfully odd characters taking up residence there. We forget to revel in dappled things. We forget we're dappled. — David Dark

Sometimes,' Beauty said softly, sipping from her silver goblet, 'everyone needs to let the beast inside them out for a while'. She laughed, a sound like a waterfall meeting the sea and more glitter escaped from her fingertips. 'I like to see it. We all have our dark lusts. We should enjoy them. — Sarah Pinborough

I believe that even in the darkest of moments, a rose can bloom, and its beauty can make us hope again. I want to take you on a wild, dark journey of fear, despair, and pain, on to ultimate redemption and love. — Carole Gill

That's what makes it so right. Your eyes - your soul is there, but the rest of you is still so undefined. That's the beauty of childhood. The eyes show everything you've seen so far, but the rest of you is still so open to possibility, to whatever you might become. — Bree Despain

Live in the space between chaos and shape. I walk the line that continually threatens to lose its tautness under me, dropping me into the dark pit where there is no meaning. At other times the line is so wired that it lights up the soles of my feet, gradually my whole body, until I am my own beacon, and I see then the beauty of newly created worlds, a form that is not random. A new beginning. — Jeanette Winterson

Real age, as I came to see from the genuine pieces that passed through my hands, was variable, crooked, capricious, singing here and sullen there, warm asymmetrical streaks on a rosewood cabinet from where a slant of sun had struck it while the other side was as dark as the day it was cut. — Donna Tartt

Loved. I hadn't even realized how desperetly I'd wanted love.How much we both needed to know that in a world of dark corners and sharp needles, there really is a place where kisses taste like apple pie and where stars spill like suger across the sky. A place where unknown roads no longer scare you because you have another hand to hold. A place where butterflies always flutter whenever you see each other, and a single touch tells you that you are not alone. A place where every kiss still feels like the first. In that place of us, Liv and Dean, love has its own poetry and language. Allure, quartrefoil, fleur-de-lis ... Professor. Beauty. — Nina Lane

The nobility of Teresa Leo's poems is that they are not disposed to hide from the dark-rather, they display a mind that tends toward obsession and brooding, that works against fatality like fingers at a knot. The firm, attentive mind on display and the lucid unfolding of the poems are the life instinct seeking and finding its way through again and again. Love and beauty are the argument, but they don't win easily. Bloom in Reverse works through elegy toward survival with moving persistence, both driven and compelling. — Tony Hoagland

I carry their beauty inside the very soul of my being. Dark with shades of grey. White with storm clouds in the distance. Because of dad and mom, I am not afraid to dream of dark victories and black beauty. I'm not afraid to be in love with the night — Diane Keaton

In Nina Kimbereley's garden the scabiosa flowers were dark as garnet brooches; the nicotiana a veil of tossing crimson stars. Nothing was usual, or a dull color. All was exceptional, designed to be exceptional since it had been planned as the background for a beauty by the beauty. — Elizabeth Enright

Finally, I say, "long dark hair, blue-violet eyes, slender, tall, she had a Liz Taylor in Black Beauty thing going on." Reluctance sets in. Do I really want to put this together for him? "Like you," he says. Pandora's Box opens. Chocolate anyone? An abundance of heartbreak. Rare happiness. Plenty of self-destruction. Take your pick. Julia's got everything in here. — Katherine Owen

Seen under the microscope, Stegomyia is a creature of striking beauty. Its general color is dark gray, but the thorax is marked with a silvery-white lyre-shaped pattern; the abdomen is banded with silvery-white stripes and the six-jointed legs are striped alternately with black and pure white. Among mosquitoes Stegomyia is the height of elegance. — David McCullough

I believe that true beauty comes from inside you and that always shows through. I have no problem with whatever the next look is, whether it's big blonde hair and blue eyes or green hair and dark eyes. That's fine so long as there isn't just one ideal image. — Alek Wek

Given the behaviour of human beings throughout the ages, they do not deserve life, with its many dark sides, in all its beauty, grandeur and magnificence ... — Jose Saramago

The woman laughed again. She was the loudest person in the cave. Eena wondered if perhaps she was talking to a female Ghengat. Curiosity got the best of her and she turned around to look, surprised to find neither a Ghengat nor a Harrowbethian woman, but a Mishmorat. A striking, cheetah-spotted Mishmorat with straight lengths of charcoal hair and the most alluring dark eyes in existence. This bronzed female was the same size as Eena but observably more muscular. She appeared to be a mix of cheetah, Arabian princess, and gladiator in tight-fitting pants. Eena paused, dropping the stone in her hands.
"Kira?" she breathed.
"Hmmm," the woman grumbled. Her painted eyes scrunched with displeasure. The look was still stunning. "I see my reputation precedes me."
Eena gawked as if a legendary ghost had been resurrected. "You're alive? — Richelle E. Goodrich

That place of true healing is a fierce place. It's a giant place. It's a place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmering light. And you have to work really, really, really hard to get there, but you can do it. — Cheryl Strayed

Find beauty not only in the thing itself but in the pattern of the shadows, the light and dark which that thing provides. — Jun'ichiro Tanizaki

People Die ...
Beauty Fades ...
Love Changes ...
And You Will Always Be Alone — L.J.Smith

But it is just two lovers, holding hands and in a hurry to reach their car, their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark. — John Updike

I'm continually wrestling with the idea that there are certain things in this world that simply don't fit. The idea that I have this longing for beauty and truth, and yet I'm also attracted to things that are very dark the lies that exist within me and outside of me. — Jon Foreman

We see, surrounding the narrow raft illuminated by the flickering light of human comradeship, the dark ocean on whose rolling waves we toss for a brief hour; all the loneliness of humanity amid hostile forces is concentrated on the individual soul, which must struggle alone, with what of courage it can command, against the whole weight of a universe that cares nothing for its hopes and fears. Victory, in this struggle with the powers of darkness, is the true baptism into the glorious company of heroes, the true initiation into the overmastering beauty of human existence. — Bertrand Russell

Beauty's Curse
Her bow is drawn to worlds of dark,
where arrows spring and miss their mark
she'll turn their heads but not their hearts. — Lang Leav

Oh, how the clouds stumbled in and assembled stupidly in the sky.
Great obese clouds.
Dark and plump.
Bumping into each other. Apologizing. Moving on and finding room. — Markus Zusak

She was as different from her dazzling sister as night was to day. Ballard found it difficult to look at the younger girl for more than a moment at a time. Beauty such as hers blinded him, like looking directly at the sun. Louvaen though--he could happily drown in the dark Louvaen. — Grace Draven

They watched her sit, holding the bundle up before her, the lamp just at her elbow belabored by a moth whose dark shape cast upon her face appeared captive within the delicate skull, the thin and roselit bone, like something kept in a china mask — Cormac McCarthy

B4 U,my life ws lyk a moonless night.Very dark, but der wer stars,points of light & reason.And den you shot
across my sky like a meteor.Suddenly everythng ws on fire;ter ws
brilliancy,der ws beauty.Wen u wer gone,wen d meteor had
fallen over d horizon,everythng went black.Nothing had changed,but
my eyes wer blinded by d light I cudn't c d stars anymore & ter was no more reason, for anything. — Stephanie Mayer

You turn dark shadows into canopies of hope and dry grass into gold.
My heart is spoiled and my breath consumed when the beauty of earth
gives a glimmer of understanding to the beauty of You. — Amy Litzelman

Some memories have the ability to heal, the ability to light up the dark, because the beauty of the memory is so bright, you're still able to bask in it.But the memories of us are killing me slowly. They remind me that for one moment, I had everything, while reminding me it's gone. It's the realization that we're done that's torturing me. The realization that I can see him but can't touch him, that he exists but he's not mine, is agonizing. — Aurora Rose Reynolds

Do you know why I call you Estella?" Mateo asked, lacing his fingers with mine and raising our hands up into the big blue sky. "Why?" "Because you are my star," he said, his voice low and smooth, raising the hairs on my arms. "You shine brighter than the sun." "But even the sun goes away every night." "But it is the sun's absence that makes us feel its power. We know the loss, the beauty and the life that the moon can't replace. That is why we hang on to each day we are given. That is why I hang on to you." He lowered our hands and kissed my knuckles. "I love you, Vera. I've had the moon, the dark, the cold, for too long. I want my star back. My Estrella. — Karina Halle

Things external to her may have their own weight and dimension: but within inside us she gives them such measures as she wills: death is terrifying to Cicero, desirable to Cato, indifferent to Socrates. Health, consciousness, authority, knowledge, beauty and their opposites doff their garments as they enter the soul and receive new vestments, coloured with qualities of her own choosing: brown or green; light or dark; bitter or sweet, deep or shallow, as it pleases each of the individual souls, who have not agreed together on the truth of their practices, rules or ideas. Each soul is Queen in her own state. So let us no longer seek excuses from the external qualities of anything, the responsibility lies within ourselves. Our good or our bad depends on us alone. So let us make our offertories and our vows to ourselves not to Fortune: she has no power over our behaviour, on the contrary our souls drag Fortune in their train and mould her to their own idea. — Michel De Montaigne

Your kiss thrilled me beyond imagining," he whispered. "Every night for the rest of my life, I'll dream of the afternoon in the holloway, when I was waylaid by a dark-haired beauty who devastated me with the heat of a thousand troubled stars, and left my soul in cinders. Even when I'm an old man, and my brain has fallen to wrack and ruin, I'll remember the sweet fire of your lips under mine, and I'll say to myself, 'Now, that was a kiss.'" Silver-tongued devil, Pandora thought, unable to hold back a crooked grin. — Lisa Kleypas

Her nose was perfect; her lips exquisite. Like a master placing a go stone on the board after long deliberation, he placed the details of her beauty one by one in the misty dark and drew back to savour them. — Yukio Mishima

To be poor, ugly and, moreover, intelligent condemns one in our society to a dark and disillusioned life ... to beauty all is forgiven. — Muriel Barbery

I naturally believe there will be a future, but I do not waste my time imagining its radiant beauty ... It seems to me that we ought to think first about the present. Even if the present is desperately dark, I do not wish to leave it. Will tomorrow be free from darkness? We'll talk about that tomorrow. — Lu Xun

The moon was up now and the trees were dark against it, and he passed the frame houses with their narrow yards, light coming from the shuttered windows; the unpaved alleys, with their double rows of houses; Conch town, where all was starched, well-shuttered, virtue, failure, grit and boiled grunts, under-nourishment, prejudice, righteousness, inter-breeding and the comforts of religion; the open-doored, lighted Cuban boilto houses, shacks whose only romance was their names — Ernest Hemingway,

Every work cancels the dark. Every work is a hymn from the other side of memory to a memory that is spellbound. Beauty is death's gift to vulgar life so that it can live in beauty. — Edmond Jabes

As a first-generation Ethiopian immigrant, Sheba had lived in Charleston since she turned five years of age. She was Ethiopian by birth, but American by preference. She had worked hard, studied and sacrificed plenty to get where she was today, no easy feat for someone who had just celebrated her twenty-sixth birthday. According to her friends, Sheba was a beauty, though when she looked in the mirror, she saw inevitable flaws; her cheekbones were too pronounced, her mouth a little too wide, her nose with that perturbing slant to it. Still, she accepted compliments gratefully, especially from her roommate, Janelle. Janelle was the true beauty, Sheba thought, with dark ebony skin so smooth that she could be a walking ad for Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate. — Joanna Hynes

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life? — Mary Oliver

I don't deliberately look for something dark or bleak or disconnected, in fact that's not something I'm even conscious of in the work as I'm making it. I'm always trying to create beauty, reveal hope, show the sense of longing that exists in isolation and loneliness, and capture the search for something greater inside all of my subjects. — Gregory Crewdson

middle of the room, stands my stylist, Micah, beside a foldaway beauty chair, arranging cosmetics and other paraphernalia atop his portable vanity table, as he sings along with the music playing from his Tab. He's a good looking man, tall and broad shouldered, with dark chocolate skin, gaping flesh-holes in both ears, black dreadlocks pulled back into a thick ponytail and heavy eye make-up which makes his eyes appear to pop out of his face. Too bad he's gay. — M.L. Sparrow

Courtesy is a silver lining around the dark clouds of civilization; it is the best part of refinement and in many ways, an art of heroic beauty in the vast gallery of man's cruelty and baseness. — Bryant H. McGill

These are maybe the most exciting stars, those just above where sky meets land and ocean, because we so seldom see them, blocked as they usually are by atmosphere ... and, as I grow more and more accustomed to the dark, I realize that what I thought were still clouds straight overhead aren't clearing and aren't going to clear, because these are clouds of stars, the Milky Way come to join me. There's the primal recognition, my soul saying, yes, I remember. — Paul Bogard

Only a master weaver could intertwine dark and light threads in such a way that all one saw was beauty when looking back at the finished tapestry. — Karen Witemeyer

It was growing dark on this long southern evening, and suddenly, at the exact point her finger had indicated, the moon lifted a forehead of stunning gold above the horizon, lifted straight out of filigreed, light-intoxicated clouds that lay on the skyline in attendant veils.
Behind us, the sun was setting in a simultaneous congruent withdrawal and the river turned to flame in a quiet duel of gold ... The new gold of moon astonishing and ascendant, he depleted gold of sunset extinguishing itself in the long westward slide, it was the old dance of days in the Carolina marshes, the breathtaking death of days before the eyes of children, until the sun vanished, its final signature a ribbon of bullion strung across the tops of water oaks. — Pat Conroy