Quotes & Sayings About Elegance

The elegance of a mathematical theorem is directly proportional to the number of independent ideas one can see in the theorem and inversely proportional to the effort it takes to see them. — George Polya

Many of the familiar little things that we use every day have typically evolved over a period of time to a state of familiarity. They balance form and function, elegance and economy, success and failure in ways that are not only acceptable, but also admirable. — Henry Petroski

[ The Finest Hours] reminded me a lot of a film I did called Unstoppable in that you have a driving thriller aspect of the film and it's not all that complicated of a story and there's a simple elegance to it. I liked that. It is also driven by a really strong romance and ordinary men doing extraordinary things. I love that. — Chris Pine

The smallest modification of tonality affects structure. Some things have to be rather large, but elegance is the presentation of things in their minimum dimensions. — Frederick Sommer

The Stockholm street style is distinctive, with ensembles that exemplify the city's understated elegance. — Aslaug Magnusdottir

The general problem with ambitious systems is complexity. [ ... ] it is important to emphasize the value of simplicity and elegance, for complexity has a way of compounding difficulties. — Fernando J. Corbato

I thought ... their elegance ... lies not so much in their
clothes as in their bodies, and their bodies have received it, and continue to unceasingly receive it, from their souls, which are just like yours, lovely Simonetta. — Alexander Theroux

The Armadillo A big fiesta was announced on Lake Titicaca, and the armadillo, who was a very superior creature, wanted to dazzle everybody. Long beforehand, he set to weaving a cloak of such elegance that it would knock all eyes out. The fox noticed him at work. "Are you in a bad mood?" "Don't distract me. I'm busy." "What's that for?" The armadillo explained. "Ah," said the fox, savoring the words, "for the fiesta tonight?" "What do you mean, tonight?" The armadillo's heart sank. He had never been more sure of his time calculations. "And me with my cloak only half finished!" While the fox took off with a smothered laugh, the armadillo finished the cloak in a hurry. As time was flying, he had to use coarser threads, and the weave ended up too big. For this reason the armadillo's shell is tight-warped around the neck and very open at the back. (174) — Eduardo Galeano

Grace is in a great measure a natural gift; elegance implies cultivation; or something of more artificial character. A rustic, uneducated girl may be graceful, but an elegant woman must be accomplished and well trained. It is the same with things as with persons; we talk of a graceful tree, but of an elegant house or other building. Animals may be graceful, but they cannot be elegant. The movements of a kitten or a young fawn are full of grace; but to call them "elegant" animals would be absurd. — Richard Whately

Baleen was a very pricey place that I would not have attempted on my own modest means. It has the kind of oak-paneled elegance that makes you feel the need for a cravat and spats. — Jeff Lindsay

I can't say I prefer blondes, brunettes, or redheads. I like emotion and elegance. Even expensive clothes do not guarantee a good look. You must be yourself above all! — Robert Pattinson

Thought can be lofty without being elegant, but to the extent it lacks elegance it will have less effect on others. Force without finesse is mere mass. — Fernando Pessoa

Prettiness fades after a few years, but elegance only increases with age. — Anne Gracie

Elegance in objects is everybody's right, and it shouldn't cost more than ugliness. — Paola Antonelli

Like most qualities, cuteness is delineated by what it isn't. Most people aren't cute at all, or if so they quickly outgrow their cuteness ... Elegance, grace, delicacy, beauty, and a lack of self-consciousness: a creature who knows he is cute soon isn't. — William S. Burroughs

I have the vagary of taking a lively interest in mathematical subjects only where I may anticipate ingenious association of ideas and results recommending themselves by elegance or generality. — Carl Friedrich Gauss

The Saluki is a marvel of elegance. — Vita Sackville-West

When I bike to work int he fall, I see beauty in the trees tinged with red, orange and gold. But seeing these trees through the lens of physics reveals even more beauty, captured by the Feynman quote that opens this chapter. And the deeper I look, the more elegance I glimpse: we'll see in Chapter 3 how the trees ultimately come from stars, and we'll see in Chapter 8 how studying their building blocks suggests their existence in parallel universes. — Max Tegmark

The natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety. — Samuel Johnson

Every species embodies a solution to some environmental challenge, and some of these solutions are breathtaking in their elegance. — Linda Bender

Tortoises are incredible creatures," Dad says earnestly. "What they lack in elegance and beauty they more than make up for in the ability to curl up and defend themselves from predators."
"What, like me? — Holly Smale

There is no elegance in this existence, nor grace in our lives. There is nothing poetic about feasting on blood that spills from torn flesh... — Narayan Liu

Elegance is the only beauty that never fades. — Audrey Hepburn

Elegance is not about being noticed, it's about being remembered. — Habeeb Akande

I remember the night when I was playing at Birdland, and Duke Ellington walked in wearing that cap of his and with all his elegance. The Duke then came backstage, and I was there with my band. That's the one thing I miss. — Maynard Ferguson

In less than a century after the barbarian nations settled in their new conquests, almost all the effects of the knowledge and civility, which the Romans had spread through Europe, disappeared. Not only the arts of elegance, which minister to luxury, and re supported by it, but many of the useful arts, without which life can scarcely be contemplated as comfortable, were neglected or lost. — Bryan Ward-Perkins

Some things just work. There is elegance in simplicity. — Brandon Sanderson

There might be cheats or possible cheats amongst them, men who beat their wives, men with perverse instincts, greedy men, cowardly men, lying men; but the elegance of the room invested each one with a kind of aristocracy. — Ian Fleming

Neither refinement nor delicacy is indispensable to produce elegance. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

Elegance is refusal. — Coco Chanel

Elegance of manner is the outgrowth of refined and exalted sense. — Lord Chesterfield

I felt that the elegance of pop music was that it was reflective: we were holding up a mirror to our audience and reflecting them philosophically and spiritually, rather than just reflecting society or something called 'rock and roll.' — Pete Townshend

There was a real sophistication and elegance to (Batman: The Animated Series). It certainly appealed to kids but had a depth that really made it fascinating and interesting to watch for adult fans. I think visually, it was stylistically stunning. — Jim Lee

If a poor house is well kept, or a poor girl well groomed, there is elegance if not beauty. If good people should come upon hard times, why should they immediately give up on themselves? — Zicheng Hong

Elegance must be the right combination of distinction, naturalness, care and simplicity. Outside this, believe me, there is no elegance. Only pretension. — Christian Dior

Simplicity and elegance are unpopular because thy require hard work and discipline to achieve and education to be appreciated. — Edsger W. Dijkstra

Physical elegance, which is what I am talking about here, comes from the body. This is no superficial matter, but rather the way that man found to honour the way he places his two feet on the ground. — Paulo Coelho

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

Sadly, I swallowed my tea and stared at the crowd of second-rate elegance ... — Hermann Hesse

It is generally accepted that divine service affords a legitimate opportunity for the congregation to assess not only the appearance, deportment, elegance and possible wealth of new arrivals to the parish, but the demeanour of any of their neighbours known to be in an interesting situation, ranging from pregnancy to bankruptcy. — P.D. James

Elegance doesn't mean being noticed, it means being remembered — Giorgio Armani

Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure. — Edsger Dijkstra

Her professors were astonished by her leaps of thought, by the finesse and elegance of her insights. She arrived at hypotheses by sheer intuition and with what eventually one of her mentors described as an almost alarming speed; she was like a dancer, he said, out in the cosmos springing weightlessly from star to star. Drones, merely brilliant, crawled along behind with laborious proofs that supported her assertions. — Deborah Eisenberg

4. Radicalism of forms. If a new model once created meets with much success on account of its greater efficiency than its predecessor, it lends certain neighbouring forms a formal radicalism, which attempts to borrow from the appearance of the new form: for example, bronze tools that had reached the furthest development of their utility had a disastrous influence on stone tools, warping them toward an elegance that could only be attained in bronze. Today aviation has imposed its aerodynamic forms even on baby strollers and irons. This radicalism of forms is a result of the fact that people become bored when they do not find some unexpected element in the familiar. This radicalism might seem illogical, as the advocates of standardization believe, but we must not forget that discovery is only made possible by this need of humanity. — Tom McDonough

A philosophical thought is not supposed to be impervious to all criticism; this is the error Whitehead describes of turning philosophy into geometry, and it is useful primarily as a way of gaining short-term triumphs in personal arguments that no one else cares (or even knows) about anyway. A good philosophical thought will always be subject to criticisms (as Heidegger's or Whitehead's best insights all are) but they are of such elegance and depth that they change the terms of debate, and function as a sort of "obligatory passage point" (Latour's term) in the discussions that follow.
Or in other words, the reason Being and Time is still such a classic, with hundreds of thousands or millions of readers almost a century later, is not because Heidegger made "fewer mistakes" than others of his generation. Mistakes need to be cleaned up, but that is not the primary engine of personal or collective intellectual progress. — Graham Harman

Elegance and smartness is the sexiest thing woman can have, not just the flesh — Baris Gencel

They learned to live contently with small things, to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion, to be worthy not respectable, and to be rich not wealthy. They let the sacred and unconscious bloom amidst the common, rendering it all extraordinary. — David Paul Kirkpatrick

I believe there's plenty of market for each; we're talking about an ecosystem that is going to support billions of devices, so a competitive landscape is good for consumers, developers, and the platforms alike. Apple brings a smooth elegance to its devices and platform, with the best marketplace experience to boot. Google brings a higher volume of devices as well as a more diverse ecosystem to interact with. The real story here is that Microsoft is nowhere to be seen, ending a two-decade monopoly and creating biggest opportunity for software startups probably ever. — Aaron Levie

Sleaze is a point by point refutation of elegance. — Mason Cooley

And I wish that while walking in your life's lane, you come across and walk with dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the planners, the doers, the successful people with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground. Let all the positive spirit & energies of this universe come together this way, your way, making every journey of your life most beautiful, fulfilling and prideful. Let the world feel blessed and continue to get better by touch of your elegance. — Smishra

Think carefully about whom you model yourself after, because that's how your date - and the world will see you. And it is how you will come to see yourself. Who you are as a girlfriend is a harbinger of who you will be as a wife. Consider comporting yourself with the dignity, grace, and elegance of Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, or Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. These were women of outstanding character, beloved by all and desired by men of substance. — Susan Patton

It is not easy to stop thinking ill of others.Usually one must enter into a friendship with a person who has accomplished that great feat himself.Then something might start to rub off on you of that true elegance. — Hafez

I've been an admirer of Helen Mirren for a long time. As I get older, I find myself admiring older women who have poise and elegance. — Thomas Haden Church

It's a new town. The old elegance is gone. It used to be one big family, this industry. — Cesar Romero

It was funny how the old practices always came around again. It was the rhythm of human enterprise to invent and worship some new approach, to fully reject it a generation later, to realize the need for it again a generation or two after that and then hastily reinvent it as new, usually without its original elegance. Scientists hated to look backward for anything. — Ann Brashares

Elegance and comfort are not incompatible, and whoever maintains the contrary simply doesn't know what he's talking about — Salvatore Ferragamo

Simplicity, carried to an an extreme, becomes elegance. — Jon Franklin

There's this British elegance that we, at times, have really missed in the States. We've always been more of a sportswear culture. — Paul Weller

The situation is now ripe for superposition! — Edward M. Purcell

The elegance of dress, of motion, and of manners gives a lustre to beauty, and inflames the senses through the imagination. Luxurious entertainments, midnight dances, and licentious spectacles, present at once temptation and opportunity to female frailty. From such dangers the unpolished wives of the barbarians were secured by poverty, solitude, and the painful cares of a domestic life. — Edward Gibbon

Elegance is exquisite polish. — Suzanne Curchod

It is to labor, and to labor only, that man owes everything possessed of exchangeable value. Labor is the talisman that has raised him from the condition of the savage: that has changed the desert and the forest into cultivated fields; that has covered the earth with cities, and the ocean with ships; that has given us plenty, comfort, and elegance, instead of want, misery, and barbarism. — John Ramsay McCulloch

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation. — Robert Fitzgerald

Her painting was vaporous and unsubstantial, but it had a flowerlike grace and even a certain careless elegance. There — W. Somerset Maugham

To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance. — Jean Genet

Everywhere, I'm looking to reach elegance and intelligence. — Philippe Starck

But his
marital education had since made strides, and he now knew that a
disregard for money may imply not the willingness to get on without
it but merely a blind confidence that it will somehow be provided. If
Undine, like the lilies of the field, took no care, it was not because
her wants were as few but because she assumed that care would be taken
for her by those whose privilege it was to enable her to unite floral
insouciance with Sheban elegance. — Edith Wharton

The well dressed man never stands out in a crowd; his elegance sets him apart. — Oscar De La Renta

True elegance consists not in having a closet bursting with clothes, but rather in having a few well-chosen numbers in which one feels totally at ease. — Coco Chanel

There is a certain elegance in wasting time. Any fool can waste money, but when you waste time you waste what is priceless. — W. Somerset Maugham

I fell in love with the elegance and precision of genetic analysis and experimentation to answer profound biological questions. — David Suzuki

The gracefulness of the slender fishing boats that glided into the harbor in Dakar was equaled only by the elegance of the Senegalese women who sailed through the city in flowing robes and turbaned heads. I wandered through the nearby marketplace, intoxicated by the exotic spices and perfumes. The Senegalese are a handsome people and I enjoyed the brief time that Oliver and I spent in their country. The society showed how disparate elements
French, Islamic, and African
can mingle to create a unique and distinctive culture. — Nelson Mandela

THE INNER HISTORY OF A DAY No one knew the name of this day; Born quietly from deepest night, It hid its face in light, Demanded nothing for itself, Opened out to offer each of us A field of brightness that traveled ahead, Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps And the light of thought to show the way. The mind of the day draws no attention; It dwells within the silence with elegance — John O'Donohue

So if there is something on the planet that is worth living for, I'd better not miss it, because once you're dead, it's too late for regrets, and if you die by mistake, that is really, really dumb. — Muriel Barbery

Elegance lies not in the clothes we wear, but in the way we wear them. — Paulo Coelho

New Orleans is a city of elegance, beauty, and refinement. — Tom Piazza

In temperance there is ever cleanliness and elegance. — Joseph Joubert

Lady Middleton piqued herself upon the elegance and extravagance of her table, and all her domestic arrangements; she loved to surprise English visitors with displays of hospitality native to her homeland, such as flavouring her soups with monkey urine and not telling anyone she had done so until the bowl had been drained. — Ben H. Winters

THE BEAUTY OF THE EARTH IS THE FIRST BEAUTY. MILLIONS OF years before us the earth lived in wild elegance. Landscape is the first-born of creation. Sculpted with huge patience over millennia, landscape has enormous diversity of shape, presence and memory. — John O'Donohue

Elegance does not consist in putting on a new dress. — Coco Chanel

In the rosy glow it diffused her companions seemed full of amiable qualities. She liked their elegance; their lightness, their lack of emphasis: even the self-assurance which at times was so like obtuseness now seemed the natural sign of social ascendency. They were lords of the only world she cared for, and they were ready to admit her to their ranks and let her lord it with them. Already she felt within her a stealing allegiance to their standards, an acceptance of their limitations, a disbelief in the things they did not believe in, a contemptuous pity for the people who were not able to live as they lived. — Edith Wharton

His hair was a curling mess and he showed the proper desregard for sartorial elegance which Harry had always seen as a sign of reliability in a person. Neat men always struck him as desperate and ambitious. — Peter Carey

Everything comes out in blues music: joy, pain, struggle. Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance. It's about a man and a woman. So the pain and the struggle in the blues is that universal pain that comes from having your heart broken. Most blues songs are not about social statements. — Wynton Marsalis

Like the Baron, Mathilde developed a formula for acting out life as a series of roles - that is, by saying to herself in the morning while brushing her blond hair, "Today I want to become this or that person," and then proceeding to be that person.
One day she decided she would like to be an elegant representative of a well-known Parisian modiste and go to Peru. All she had to do was to act the role. So she dressed with care, presented herself with extraordinary assurance at the house of the modiste, was engaged to be her representative and given a boat ticket to Lima.
Aboard ship, she behaved like a French missionary of elegance. Her innate talent for recognizing good wines, good perfumes, good dressmaking, marked her as a lady of refinement. — Anais Nin

Chicago has a strange metaphysical elegance of death about it. — Claes Oldenburg

A statesman who keeps his ear permanently glued to the ground will have neither elegance of posture nor flexibility of movement. — Abba Eban

Last summer I was staying at a house in Hampshire which was famous for the brilliance and the originality of its gardens. There were many of them, but the most beautiful of all was a walled garden in which every flower was blue. There were all the obvious things like delphiniums and acronitums and larkspurs, but the most beautiful blue of all came from the groups of cabbages - the ordinary blue pickling cabbage. Set against the blazing blue of the other flowers, it had a bloom and elegance which made it a thing of the greatest delight. — Beverley Nichols

Men want a girl who looks like a boy. They want to protect her but she must be a survivor. And she must come ... like a train ... but with ... elegance. — Patrick Marber

When it comes to the way you present yourself online, the acid test is: Can you imagine Grace Kelly doing it? If you can picture her saying "Dem hos betta watch out imma beat some ass tonite", then congratulations, you have a much better imagination than mine. Likewise, if you can't quite see her posting a snapshot of herself drunkenly pole-dancing, think twice about broadcasting those pictures to the world. — Rosie Blythe

Grooming is the secret of real elegance. The best clothes, the most wonderful jewels, the most glamorous beauty don't count without good grooming. — Christian Dior

Clary knew she'd never be able to pull off that sort of elegance in a million years, and she didn't care. Isabelle was Isabelle, and Clary was grateful she existed, making the world a little fiercer with every one of her smiles. — Cassandra Clare

It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage. — Samuel Johnson

If you listen to the great Beatle records, the earliest ones where the lyrics are incredibly simple. Why are they still beautiful? Well, they're beautifully sung, beautifully played, and the mathematics in them is elegant. They retain their elegance. — Bruce Springsteen

I feel that my environment reflects my belief in the grace and art and elegance of living simply. — Bell Hooks

Women who stay true to themselves are always more interesting and beautiful to me: women like Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffe and Anna Magnani - women who have style, chic, allure and elegance. They didn't submit to any standard of beauty - they defined it. — Isabella Rossellini

What the scientists have always found by physical experiment was an a priori orderliness of nature, or Universe always operating at an elegance level that made the discovering scientist's working hypotheses seem crude by comparison. The discovered reality made the scientists exploratory work seem relatively disorderly. — R. Buckminster Fuller

The suspicion is in the air nowadays that the superiority of one of our formulas to another may not consist so much in its literal 'objectivity,' as in subjective qualities like its usefulness, its 'elegance,' or its congruity with our residual beliefs — William James

The traditional mathematician recognizes and appreciates mathematical elegance when he sees it. I propose to go one step further, and to consider elegance an essential ingredient of mathematics: if it is clumsy, it is not mathematics. — Edsger Dijkstra

Elegance is elimination. — Cristobal Balenciaga

Come back
believer in shade
believer in silence and elegance
believer in ferns
believer in patience
believer in the rain — W.S. Merwin