Honest Beauty Quotes & Sayings

Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. there is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there. — Henry Miller

Kindly permit me to tell you, sir, that I hate you. I hate you and your child, as I hate the life of which you are the representative: cheap, ridiculous, but yet triumphant life, the everlasting antipodes and deadly enemy of beauty. I cannot say I despise you - for I am honest. You are stronger than I. I have no armour for the struggle between us, I have only the Word, avenging weapon of the weak. Today I have availed myself of this weapon. This letter is nothing but an act of revenge - you see how honourable I am - and if any word of mine is sharp and bright and beautiful enough to strike home, to make you feel the presence of a power you do not know, to shake even a minute your robust equilibrium, I shall rejoice indeed. - — Thomas Mann

To me, 'beauty' means to be natural, creative, honest - to say the truth. — Nawal El Saadawi

That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty. — William Shakespeare

He real world's all we've got. Believers in the supernatural claim to have special wisdom about the world. But real wisdom means knowing truth from falsehood, knowing the difference between evidence and wishful thinking. Yes, the real world is mysterious and sometimes frightening. But would the supernatural make it better? The real world has beauty, poetry, love and the joy of honest discovery. Isn't that enough? — John Stossel

The beauty of being a musician is writing songs. That's the best part. It's therapeutic and honest and private. — Gin Wigmore

There is nothing more pure and beautiful than a person who always speaks truthfully with a childlike heart. — Suzy Kassem

Religion as a vital issue is dead except on paper, and whatever beauty-baiting the future may witness will be the work of greed and trade, and not of honest cosmos-facing. — H.P. Lovecraft

I learned to see beauty in everything and ugliness in everything. I developed a very honest perspective. — Gerard Way

I seek what lies beneath surface beauty. What interests me are intimate human complexities - the darkness as well as the light. I cannot will this kind of transcendent communication into existence. I have to be open and truly present, and if I am lucky, grace descends. My best photographs are an honest collaboration, and when the viewer also connects, I feel the circle is complete. — Joyce Tenneson

June has never looked more beautiful than she does now, unadorned and honest, vulnerable yet invincible. — Marie Lu

It is neither wise nor honest to detract from beauty as a quality. There cannot be a refined soul insensible to its influence. — Lew Wallace

Beauty was devised by someone very insecure to rob others of the happiness he or she couldn't feel. It was a dick move, to be honest. — Durjoy Datta

honest-to-goodness beauty — Marci Peschke

Now, it's been a while since I had to tell this, so a few of the finer points may not connect as well as they should, but the story will bear the weight. That's the beauty of the truth: put all together, it makes sense even if the parts might not. — Thomm Quackenbush

Everything teaches, everyone preaches, all have a gospel to sell! Better the one who is honest and open in declaring an agenda than the one who fools you into believing they are only spinning a pretty fancy for beauty's sake. — Karen Lord

There is a beauty to touring - to be honest, there's a way that music connects and you really feel the actual reaction of people to the music that you're making, and I feel like if I didn't do that I just wouldn't know, and I don't think my music would be the same. — Zach Condon

Home Run portrays the church in its beauty
true life transformation through real and honest relationships with one another and with Jesus. — Joyce Meyer

Sometimes love doesn't look like what we think it should look like. Sometimes it's paradoxical. Sometimes we have to step outside our comfort zone. Sometimes we have to be more honest than we thought we'd ever have to be or more supportive than we are taught is appropriate. When we traverse those boundaries, that's when we really understand what this whole love thing is all about. We become more than just human. We become part of the giant, beautiful ever-changing reality of life. By loving without limits, we become wise, strong, and beautiful. We become more of what we already are. — Vironika Tugaleva

Having experimented in both poetry and prose, I can say that the two are such loaded words. But neither are quite as weighted as the word "poet". I think some people can write poetry their whole lives, and never truly BE a "poet". Whereas I see poets in the wanderers I encounter, the baristas who serve me, and the truckers I, so, love to talk to.To be a poet in my humble opinion is to be a muse of the human experience. I love that I love the idea, that anything can be poetry, it can't be defined. It's a feeling, like punk rock. I'm not one for form or structure. I say if your words are visceral and honest, it's poetry. If you see the beauty of the world and humanity, and you preach it, you're a poet. — Mallory Smart

Hitherto the nude has always been represented in poses which presuppose an audience. But my women are simple, honest creatures who are concerned with nothing beyond their physical occupations ... it is as if you were looking through a keyhole. — Edgar Degas

Faith of Cranes is a love song to the beauty and worth of the lives we are able to lead in the world just as it is, troubled though it be ... The writing is honest, intensely lived, and overflowing with heart: broken, mended, and whole. — David James Duncan

why do you style yourself "your worth-
less and insignificant brother"? You recognize
your insignificance? . . . Recognize it before
God; perhaps, too, in the presence of beauty, intel-
ligence, nature, but not before men. Among men
you must be conscious of your dignity. Why, you
are not a rascal, you are an honest man, aren't you?
Well, respect yourself as an honest man and know
that an honest man is not something worthless.
Don't confound "being humble" with "recognizing
one's worthlessness." . . . — Anton Chekhov

Dawn Kotzer is the kind of coach who can see beauty and wisdom in circumstances that seem ugly and chaotic. She's kind, genuine and honest, willing and able to see where her clients get stuck and gently help them recover their freedom. Better than a coach who gives you the answers, Dawn will help you find the answers to your life's dilemmas that are already within you. — Martha Beck

I'm so tired of people who can't be honest. "Beauty is on the inside" Really?? Then why do rich guys & successful guys always end up with beautiful women but they have lousy personalities?. — Colin Cowherd

Ten years dropped from a man's life are no small loss; ten years of manhood, of household happiness and care; ten years of honest labor, of conscious enjoyment of sunshine and outdoor beauty; ten years of grateful life
one day looking forward to all this; the next, waking to find them passed, and a blank. — Mary Mapes Dodge

With the constant pile of past experiences having a toll, most people get too scared to see beauty in themselves. A very honest compliment and they try inevitably to cook up conspiracy theories. Although there are ulterior motives (to the compliments) most of the time, look past it, accept, and appreciate your magic. — Ufuoma Apoki

I study everything that I do to become better all the time at my craft. The beauty for me about being an artist is that the dream will never die because I'm not obsessed with material things and don't care about the money and don't care about the attention of the public but only the love of my fans. For me it's about keeping the dream alive of how much more devoted, how much more honest, how much better of an artist can I become? That's the only fear that I ever have, that the dream will die. — Lady Gaga

For the hand of a beauty with honest words and sensibilities so mighty."
Though your mother and father had hoped for something more fragile (and flighty), — Mandy Nachampassack-Maloney

So much wanting and longing, clutching, desiring, passion and hatred and terrible need. Here, death was suitable, there was room for it, the grip of life's relentless urges slackened, replaced by this icy simplicity. This wasnt her death. It was his. That was the sad and honest truth. Though it would stay with her, it would be more like a black onyx heart on a silver chain, worn privately, under her clothes, close to her body, all her life. The guilt, the beauty, everything. It wasnt over, it had only begun. Well ok then, Okay. — Janet Fitch

Finally, gentlemen, there are people with an hereditary animus against private property. You may call this phenomenon degeneracy. But I tell you that you cannot entice a true thief, and thief by vocation, into the prose of honest vegetation by any gingerbread reward, or by the offer of a secure position, or by the gift of money, or by a woman's love: because there is here a permanent beauty of risk, a fascinating abyss of danger, the delightful sinking of the heart, the impetuous pulsation of life, the ecstasy! — Thomas Seltzer

The honest preachers had energy and go. They
fought the devil, no holds barred, boots and eye-gouging permitted. You might get the idea that they howled truth and beauty the way a seal bites out the National Anthem on a row of circus horns. But some of the truth and beauty remained, and the anthem was recognizable. — John Steinbeck

You don't need another Human Being to make your life complete, but let's be honest. Having your wounds kissed by someone who doesn't see them as disasters In your soul, but cracks to put their love into, Is the most calming thing In this World. — Emery Allen

Here she tossed her foot impatiently, and showed an inch or two of calf. A sailor on the mast, who happened to look down at the moment, started so violently that he missed his footing and only saved himself by the skin of his teeth. 'If the sight of my ankles means death to an honest fellow who, no doubt, has a wife and family to support, I must, in all humanity, keep them covered,' Orlando thought. Yet her legs were among her chieftest beauties. And she fell to thinking what an odd pass we have come to when all a woman's beauty has to be kept covered lest a sailor fall from a mast-head. 'A pox on them!' she said, realizing for the first time what, in other circumstances, she would have been taught as a child, that is to say, the sacred responsibilities of womanhood ... — Virginia Woolf

She was an intelligent and honest woman who knew what she was... and she was no beauty. Her attractions were moderate at best, and that was only if one completely discounted the current feminine ideal. She was short, and while on some days she could be described as voluptuous, on others she was most definitely plump. Her hair was a reddish-brown, wildly chaotic mass of curls- hateful curls that successfully defied any substance or implement used to straighten them. Oh, she had nice skin with no pockmarks or blemishes, and her eyes had once been described as "fine" by some well-meaning friend of the family. But they were plain gray eyes, with no shade of green or blue to enliven them. — Lisa Kleypas

Where is truth, forsooth, and who knoweth it? Is Beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so? Does Venus squint? Has she got a splay-foot, red hair, and a crooked back? Anoint my eyes, good Fairy Puck, so that I may ever consider the Beloved Object a paragon! Above all, keep on anointing my mistress's dainty peepers with the very strongest ointment, so that my noddle may ever appear lovely to her, and that she may continue to crown my honest ears with fresh roses! — William Makepeace Thackeray

Then Wang Lung turned to the woman and looked at her for the first time. She had a square, honest face, a short, broad nose with large black nostrils, and her mouth was wide as a gash in her face. Her eyes were small and of a dull black in color, and were filled with some sadness that was not clearly expressed. It was a face that seemed habitually silent and unspeaking, as though it could not speak if it would. She bore patiently Wang Lung's look, without embarrassment or response, simply waiting until he had seen her. He saw that it was true there was not beauty of any kind in her face - a brown, common, patient face. But there were no pock-marks on her dark skin, nor was her lip split. In her ears he saw his rings hanging, the gold-washed rings he had bought, and on her hands were the rings he had given her. He turned away with secret exultation. Well, he had his woman! — Pearl S. Buck

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. - RALPH WALDO EMERSON — Lama Surya Das

I suppose as long as novels last, and authors aim at interesting their public, there must always be in the story a virtuous and gallant hero; a wicked monster, his opposite; and a pretty girl, who finds a champion. Bravery and virtue conquer beauty; and vice, after seeming to triumph through a certain number of pages, is sure to be discomfited in the last volume, when justice overtakes him, and honest folks come by their own. — William Makepeace Thackeray

She 's adorned Amply that in her husband's eye looks lovely,- The truest mirror that an honest wife Can see her beauty in. — John M. Tobin Jr.

At a certain point, an eating disorder ceases to be "about" any one thing. It stops being about your family, or your culture. Very simply, it becomes an addiction not only emotionally but also chemically. And it becomes a crusade. If you are honest with yourself, you stop believing that anyone could "make" you do such a thing - who, your parents? They want you to starve to death? Not likely. Your environment? It couldn't careless. You are also doing it for yourself. It is a shortcut to something many women without an eating disorder have gotten: respect and power. It is a visual temper tantrum. You are making an ineffective statement about this and that, a grotesque, self-defeating mockery of cultural standards of beauty, societal misogyny. It is a blow to your parents, at whom you are pissed.
And it is so very seductive. It is so reassuring, so all-consuming, so entertaining.
At first. — Marya Hornbacher

Eric's performance is an awesome and entirely honest expression of the pain and beauty of his music. To watch him play is like riding on the tail of a dragon, but he is so gentle with his rider, you forget how high up you are or how intense the ride is. He is perhaps the most generous performer I have ever watched, every bit of himself is given to the audience. He's like a Marina Abramovic with a piano, completely and deeply committed, regardless of that pain. — Tea Leoni

The first quality of an honest man is contempt for religion, which would have us afraid of the most natural thing in the world, which is death; and would have us hate the one beautiful thing destiny has given us, which is life. — Umberto Eco

Meanwhile Ami had been cheering me on, all she needed were some pom-poms, and cleavage, and then, the way she was dressed, she could have been one of the Dallas Cowgirls. Indeed, as I looked down to her, for a moment I clearly saw the beauty that I knew one day she would achieve, and to be honest I was suddenly a bit jealous of the bastard who would eventually gain that sweet lovely beauty for his own! — Andrew James Pritchard

Raw and honest is what I go for [in my style of shooting]. I am looking for your inner beauty. The outside tells a story ... But together is raw honesty. — Nikki Sixx

But love, honest love, requires empathy. It is a sharing - of joy, of pain, of laughter, and of tears. Honest love makes one's soul a reflection of the partner's moods. And as a room seems larger when it is lined with mirrors, so do the joys become amplified. And as the individual items within the mirrored room seem less acute, so does pain diminish and fade, stretched thin by the sharing. That is the beauty of love, whether in passion or friendship. A sharing that multiplies the joys and thins the pains. — R.A. Salvatore

If we really believe the gospel we proclaim, we'll be honest about our own beauty and brokenness, and the beautiful broken One will make himself known to our neighbors through the chinks in our armor - and in theirs. — Fil Anderson