Faded Beauty Quotes & Sayings

I sought her eye, desirous to read there the intelligence which I could not discern in her face or hear in her conversation; it was merry, rather small; by turns I saw vivacity, vanity, coquetry, look out through its irid, but I watched in vain for a glimpse of soul. I am no Oriental; white necks, carmine lips and cheeks, clusters of bright curls, do not suffice for me without that Promethean spark which will live after the roses and lilies are faded, the burnished hair grown grey. In sunshine, in prosperity, the flowers are very well; but how many wet days are there in life
November seasons of disaster, when a man's hearth and home would be cold indeed, without the clear, cheering gleam of intellect. — Charlotte Bronte

Who was this girl alone so late at night
in search of a faded cassette illusion to disembowel the clocks of time's intrusion? Those eyes belonged to the most beautiful maniac I've ever met. Our love is a vine of entrails that can follow any coffin anywhere, no matter how deep any gravedigger might travel. — Nicholaus Patnaude

Brown people and black people and red people swarmed through our great halls, until those who were white looked simply faded-out human beings beside them. Indeed, I came to see that white is not a color in skin any more than in textiles, and if it had not quality, it had no value even for humanity. I saw that color in skin had a certain advantage in strength and warmth as a means of beauty. — Candace Wheeler

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97:
Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.
Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday. — Mary Schmich

The sky was a high, pale blue, like faded linen hung in the sun ... Under the alders were bluebells, dark blue, blue flowers hanging their little heads from the beauty of their blossoms. — Eloisa James

Faded the flower and all its budded charms,Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes,Faded the shape of beauty from my arms,Faded the voice, warmth, whiteness, paradise!Vanishd unseasonably — John Keats

Fashion, after all, is magic and miracle ... intended to bestow proportion and beauty where both have been lost or faded with the years. — Charles James

She is bizarre, fantastic, nervous, like someone in a high fever. Her beauty drowned me. As I sat before her, I felt I would do anything she asked of me. Henry suddenly faded. She was color and brilliance and strangeness. By the end of the evening I had extricated myself from her power. She killed my admiration by her talk. Her talk. The enormous ego, false, weak, posturing. She — Anais Nin

To see how pretty an old woman once was, it is not enough just to look at each feature; they must be translated. — Marcel Proust

The flowers anew, returning seasons bring; but beauty faded has no second spring. — Ambrose Philips

Can I say of her face - altered as I have reason to remember it, perished as I know it is - that it is gone, when here it comes before me at this instant, as distinct as any face that I may choose to look on in a crowded street? Can I say of her innocent and girlish beauty, that it faded, and was no more, when its breath falls on my cheek now, as it fell that night? Can I say she ever changed, when my remembrance brings her back to life, thus only; and, truer to its loving youth than I have been, or man ever is, still holds fast what it cherished then? — Charles Dickens

The back barn door opened, and in walked a vision in a billowing green dress. As she led in her mare, Mr. McBride's voice faded away as Tom's total attention turned to the girl. About twenty-one or two, Tom guessed. Not too tall, nor short. Beautiful heart-shaped face decorated with rosy cheeks and light freckles. Long auburn hair tied back in a ponytail. Perfectly set green eyes. Full-bosomed and hourglass shaped. Breathtaking. — C.G. Faulkner

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

Against a wall a faded blonde woman - an exiled angel, the hints of beauty still lingering on her palewhite face - sits with blackoutlined eyes burning into the bar. — John Rechy

She was utterly unlike what she had been when he first saw her. Both morally and physically she had changed for the worse. [ ... ] He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. — Leo Tolstoy

And you're sorry that the ephemeral beauty has faded so rapidly, so irretrievably, that it flashed so deceptively and pointlessly before your eyes
you're sorry, for you didn't even have time to fall in love ... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. And in spite of this he felt that then, when his love was stronger, he could, if he had greatly wished it, have torn that love out of his heart; but now when as at that moment it seemed to him he felt no love for her, he knew that what bound him to her could not be broken. — Leo Tolstoy

The clurichaun wasn't going to be winning any beauty contests. Not only was he short - four feet at best - but he was rather squat. Not brawny, but of a sturdy build with shorter-than-average legs and overly long arms. His face, which could best be described as having been sculpted by a young child, didn't improve upon his unusual proportions. His nose was bulbous and lumpy, his ears stuck out from his head, and his short hair shot out from his head in uneven spikes. His clothes were another matter entirely. The stained and ripped jeans were held up by a twine belt, and the faded plaid shirt was half-untucked, missing buttons, and one arm was holding on to the body of the shirt by a thread. "Oh, — N.E. Conneely

In all things there is beauty. In the glint of dew clinging to the strands of a spider's web; in the way the setting sun winks off shards of broken glass; in the rainbow forming in the soap suds in a sink full of dirty dishes; in a blade of grass which manages to force its way, with patience and time, through the all too willing grasp of sidewalk cement. It is in the faded brown of leaves, turning, twisting against their fate, as they fall to the ground, light and dry as brittle bones, and in the bare, thin-tipped branches, denuded by a change in season. It is in the way a stranger's laughter cradles you if you let it. It is in the intricate scars of a lover's back and in our upturned eyes when we ask for forgiveness. — Marta Curti

Faded is my heart ...
Faded is my dream ...
Faded they may seem ...
Never I scream! — Larissa Qat

He knew that beauty faded quickly when embodied by selfishness, — Francine Rivers

Ah, I found you." Came a voice behind me. My heart skipped a beat as a smile spread across my face. How do I already know his voice?
'My ears have not yet drunk a hundred words of thy tongue's uttering, yet I know the sound.' I remembered the line from Romeo and Juliet. I could not forget Ariston's voice if I tried. At the sound, all thoughts of the odd occurrence faded.
I turned around to see Ariston Crete walking towards me. I realized when I saw him that there was a part of my mind that had wondered if he was real, if I had not only imagined his beauty, but clearly I had not. Somehow, he is real, right down to his ancient eyes. It felt just as indescribable to look into his eyes as it had before. — Jasmine Dubroff

Why, in his life of frequent travel, had he never recognized the beauty of flight? The improbability of it. The sound of the engines faded, the airplane receding into blue until it was folded into silence and became a far-distant dot in the sky. — Emily St. John Mandel

It's a world full of terror and beauty (here her writing became so small Meggie could hardly make it out) and I could always understand why Dustfinger felt homesick for it.
The last sentence worried Meggie, but when she looked anxiously at her mother, Teresa smiled and reached for her hand. I was far, far more homesick for you two, she wrote on the palm of it, and Meggie closed her fingers over the words as if to hold them fast. She read them again and again on the long drive back to Elinor's house, and it was many days before they faded. — Cornelia Funke

All the pain and fear from the past had faded away, replaced with love and a glimmering hope for tomorrow. Now she knew there had been beauty within God's plan all along. — Rachel Skatvold

At that, his smile faded and he kissed her. "Ross," she said. "Dear Ross." "I love you," he said, "and am your servant. Demelza, look at me. If I've done wrong in the past, give me leave to make amends." So he found that what he had half despised was not despicable, that what had been for him the satisfaction of an appetite, a pleasant but commonplace adventure in disappointment, owned wayward and elusive depths he had not known before, and carried the knowledge of beauty in its heart. — Winston Graham

We are graduating members from the class of we made it, not the faded echoes of voices crying out names will never hurt me. Of course they did. But our lives will ever always continue to be a balancing act that has less to do with pain and more to do with beauty. — Shane Koyczan

Flowers, cold from the dew,
And autumn's approaching breath,
I pluck for the warm, luxuriant braids,
Which haven't faded yet.
In their nights, fragrantly resinous,
Entwined with delightful mystery,
They will breathe in her springlike
Extraordinary beauty.
But in a whirlwind of sound and fire,
From her shing head they will flutter
And fall-and before her
They will die, faintly fragrant still.
And, impelled by faithful longing,
My obedient gaze will feast upon them-
With a reverent hand,
Love will gather their rotting remains. — Anna Akhmatova

Mom! Look. This one is my favorite," Devin said, pulling out a faded pink dress with a red plaid sash. The crinoline petticoat underneath was so old and stiff it made snapping sounds, like beads or fire embers. She dropped the dress over her head, over her clothes. It brushed the floor. "When I'm old enough for it to fit me, I'm going to wear it with purple shoes," she said.
"A bold choice," Kate said as Devin dove back into the trunk. The attic in Kate's mother's house had always fascinated Devin with its promise of hidden treasures. When Kate's mother had been alive, she had let Devin eat Baby Ruth candy bars and drink grape soda and play in this old trunk full of dresses that generations of Morris women had worn to try entice rich men to marry them. Most of the clothes had belonged to Kate's grandmother Marilee, a renowned beauty who, like all the rest, had fallen in love with a poor man instead. — Sarah Addison Allen

And once I knew a meditative rose That never raised its head from bowing down, Yet drew its inspiration from the stars. It bloomed and faded here beside the road, And, being a poet, wrote on empty air With fragrance all the beauty of its soul. — Henry Abbey

She lived in happy solitude, and grew old, and never worried when her beauty faded, for in her reflection she always saw a free woman. — Leigh Bardugo

I helped Master Crawford, the watchmaker, now that his sight had gone and faded to a thin pinpoint of light. That were my favorite time. I loved the beauty of all them parts working perfectly together, a little world that could be put to rights with the click of gears, like time itself answered to your fingers. There is a beauty to the way things work. Remove one part, add another, you've changed the mechanism — Kelly Link

Beauty is a paradox,
every joy must taste of pain,
every goodness bears a wound,
every faded memory stains the mind — Poeticmusings

He looked at her as a man might look at a faded flower he had plucked, in which it was difficult for him to trace the beauty that had made him pick and so destroy it — Leo Tolstoy

Demonstrate talent, said Grandmother often to me, and you will still be loved by a husband when beauty has faded. — Martine Leavitt

Beauty itself soon fades, and when a woman has beauty and nothing else, well, it's like putting all the goods in the shop window, isn't it? And the moment she loses her good looks-poor creature! what is she? Just a mere bit of faded finery to be thrown aside. — Henry Arthur Jones

Mary watched the sunset from her carriage window, realizing that such beauty could never last. Life was a golden glory that faded in the wink of an eye. Life was a village fair that only lasted for a single day. As the carriage rattled along, rocking her like a babe in arms, Mary felt very old and wise. She found that she didn't mind being taken back to the castle, to a caring captivity that was filled with comforts and kindness. And she also found that she couldn't keep her eyes open. — Margaret George

They had painted a lady leaning her arms on the sill of the window. This lady was waiting for a husband. Her flesh was slack and she was some forty-five years old. Perhaps she had been waiting since she was fifteen. A rose and mauve lady that had not yet gathered her flesh and her beauty into dark clothes, and still waited, like a rose stripped of its petals, with her faded colors and her artificial smile, bitter as a grimace. — Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio

In moments among my various agonies, I noticed the beauty that surrounded me, the wonder of things both small and large: the color of a desert flower that brushed against me on the trail or the grand sweep of the sky as the sun faded over the mountains. — Cheryl Strayed

Later in my room, I lift up my dress and twist to see the rainbow splotch of lotus on my side. And it occurs to me, what if I stopped hating it? What if the tattoo and the scar and this summer's freckles are my patina? Wabi-Sabi says rust and faded paint hold beauty. So what if I let these marks be passport stamps from where I've been - one's that don't determine a damn thing about where I'm going next? — Emery Lord