If I Were Beautiful Quotes & Sayings

All the music I loved as a child, people thought it was junk. People were unaware of the subtext in so many of those records, but if you were a kid, you were just completely tuned in, even though you didn't always say - you wouldn't dare say it was beautiful. — Bruce Springsteen

Hearing the sound of your breathing as you sleep,
with the dog at your feet, his head resting
on a shoe, and the clock's ticking
like water dripping in a sink

I know that, even if reincarnation were a fact,
given the inherent cruelty of the world
where beautiful things and people
are blasted apart all the day long,
I would never want to come back, knowing
I could never be this lucky twice ... — Bruce Dawe

I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston, that I might offer up my prayers to the goddess (Bendis, the Thracian Artemis.); and also because I wanted to see in what manner they would celebrate the festival, which was a new thing. I was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants; but that of the Thracians was equally, if not more, beautiful. When we had finished our prayers and viewed the spectacle, we turned in the direction of the city; and at that instant Polemarchus the son of Cephalus chanced to catch sight of us from a distance as we were starting on our way home, and told his servant to run and bid us wait for him. The servant took hold of me by the cloak behind, and said: Polemarchus desires you to wait. — Plato

I think my ideal man would speak many languages. He would speak Ibo and Yoruba and English and French and all of the others. He could speak with any person, even the soldiers, and if there was violence in their heart he could change it. He would not have to fight, do you see? Maybe he would not be very handsome, but he would be beautiful when he spoke. He would be very kind, even if you burned his food because you were laughing and talking with your girlfriends instead of watching the cooking. He would just say, 'Ah, never mind'. — Chris Cleave

See, I did finally practice that adoring look you demanded, and I'm now going to suggest you try your hand at looking adoringly back at me," she muttered out of the side of her mouth even as she kept her smile firmly in place. "The guests will get suspicious if I'm the only one doing the whole adoring business."
His lips curved into a returning smile. She was so beautiful and so different from anyone he'd ever known that he decided there and then that, although this was to be the last night they were together, he was going to make the most out of it. — Jen Turano

It was only when we brought Will back home, once the annex was adapted and ready, that I could see a point in making it beautiful again. I needed to give my son something to look at. I needed to tell him, silently, that things might change, grow, or fail, but that life did go on. That we were all part of some great cycle, some pattern that it was only God's purpose to understand. I couldn't say that to him, of course - Will and I have never been able to say much to each other - but I wanted to show him. A silent promise, if you like, that there was a bigger picture, a brighter future. — Jojo Moyes

Blake waited for her to look at him with a smile, but her shoes were still too captivating. He held a hand up to stop Cole from beginning the ceremony. He knelt on one knee, close to the hem of her dress, and looked up at her. She watched him as he kissed her hand.
"Beautiful, enchanting Livia, will you marry me today?"
Livia's disobedient tears emerged, gravity bathing his smiling face with their small, splashy wishes. She took her hand from his and covered her mouth. She nodded over and over as she cried.
Blake stood and gathered her. Livia dissolved into him, leaving the guests alternately tearing up or looking in other directions.
Blake tried to stroke her hair through the veil, but he was afraid he would pull it out. "Shhh. It's okay. I'm not that terrible, am I?"
Livia shook her head.
"I'm making you my wife right now, even if you cry through the whole damn thing." Blake switched to wiping her tears. — Debra Anastasia

After that, things happened very quickly. She gave me a key to her house, and I gave her a key to my apartment. If we were in town, we spent every weekend together. She cooked for me - she was good in the kitchen, but then she was good everywhere. We watched the Friday night fights on TV, and on Saturday or Sunday afternoons we'd go for long walks in the mountains above Malibu. Occasionally we would go to a movie, slipping in after the lights went down. Whenever we went out, Barbara [Stanwyck] would wear a scarf over her head, or a kind of hat, so it would be hard to tell who she was. For the next four years, we became part of each other's lives. In a very real way, I think we still are. Barbara proved to be one of the most marvelous relationships of my life. I was twenty-two, she was forty-five, but our ages were beside the point. She was everything to me - a beautiful woman with a great sense of humor and enormous accomplishments to her name. — Robert Wagner

Did you see it last night?" she asked quietly. "The stag?"
"Yes."
"It was beautiful."
When he didn't answer, she added, "Don't you agree?" Perhaps men did not think animals "beautiful", or did not admit to it if they did.
"Yes." He gave her a rare, easy smile. "It reminded me of you. Beautiful, graceful, fearless."
"And here I thought him so much like you. Proud, wild, strong." She laughed softly. "Perhaps he didn't exist at all, and we were just out here chasing each other."
-Cecily & Luke — Tessa Dare

I got to a state where phrases like "the Good, the True, and the Beautiful" filled me with a kind of suppressed indignation, because they stood for the big sin of Platonism: the reduction of all reality to the level of pure abstraction, as if concrete, individual substances had no essential reality of their own, but were only shadows of some remote, universal, ideal essence filed away in a big card-index somewhere in heaven, while the demi-urges milled around the Logos piping their excitement in high, fluted, English intellectual tones. — Thomas Merton

If I were to taste your mouth now, I couldn't answer for the consequences. So I can only adore this beautiful neck. I know that in a few seconds I will have to pull away, before the temptation becomes too much. It's too much already. You have no idea how much I want you. — Sylvain Reynard

My bad head cannot adjust itself to the way things are ... If I want to depict spring, it has to be in wintertime; if I want to describe a beautiful landscape, I must be enclosed within walls; and I have said a hundred times that if I were put in the Bastille, there I would paint a picture of liberty. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We would grow tired of it, Grandpa, if it were beautiful all the time. A little change from night to night is good for us.'

'For you, because you're young, Wanda. You have many, many evenings ahead of you. I don't. I want more good ones. — Isaac Asimov

I believe that in our culture of simulation, the notion of authenticity is for us what sex was for the Victorians - threat and obsession, taboo and fascination. I have lived with this idea for many years; yet, at the museum, I found the children's position strangely unsettling. For them, in this context, aliveness seemed to have no intrinsic value. Rather, it is useful only if needed for a specific purpose. Darwin's endless forms so beautiful were no longer sufficient unto themselves. — Sherry Turkle

If this were the time or the place to uphold a paradox, I am half inclined to state that Norfolk is one of the most beautiful of counties. — Virginia Woolf

We lauhed together for a long time. When we
had first met, her eyes were dull with pain-killing drugs and if she
tried to talk, her face would controt with agonizing pain. I thought
how radiantly beautiful she now looked. She stood up to leave and went
to the door but then came back and kissed me.
'I hope I never see you again,' she said.
'I quite understand,' I replied. — Henry Marsh

The humans aren't stupid, no matter what the purebloods say; they're just blind, and sometimes, that's worse. They put their fear in stories and songs, where they won't forget it. "Up the airy mountains and down the rushy glen, I dare not go a-hunting for fear of little men." We've given them plenty of reasons to fear us. Even if they've almost forgotten - even if they only remember that we were beautiful and not why they were afraid - the fear was there before anything else. There were reasons for the burning times; there's a reason the fairy tales survive. And there's a reason the human world doesn't want to see the old days come again. — Seanan McGuire

I know the devices of a demon. I was taught as a child about the demon lover. I was told about a beautiful temptress who came to a young man's room. And he, if he were wise, would demand that she turn around, because demons and witches have no back, only what they wish to present to you. — Michael Ondaatje

When I was twenty, in the summer between my sophomore and junior years in college, I fell head over heels for a barista at my local coffee shop. His name was Sam, and he is the most beautiful boy I have ever seen - in any context - and I can promise you that if you saw him, he'd be the most beautiful boy you've ever seen, too. His good looks were beyond the court of public opinion. He looked like the result of a magical gay union between Patrick Dempsey and Freddie Prinze Jr. Think about that for a few minutes. Close the book and set it aside, then close your eyes, and just think about that. I will wait here. I'm actually going to take a few minutes to think about him, too. All right. Calm down. — Katie Heaney

Do you think they're doing it?' said Alexon. Charls coughed on his wine. 'I beg your pardon?' 'The King and Prince Laurent. Do you think they're doing it?' 'Well, it's not for me to say.' Charls avoided looked at the Prince. 'I think they are,' volunteered Guilliame. 'Charls met the Prince of Vere once. He said he was so beautiful that if he were a pet he'd spark a bidding war the likes of which no one had ever seen.' 'I meant, in an honourable way,' Charls said, quickly. 'And everyone in Akielos speaks of the virility of Damianos,' continued Guilliame. 'I don't think it should follow that - ' Charls began. 'My cousin told me,' said Alexon, proudly, 'he met a man who had once been a famous gladiator from Isthima. He lasted only minutes in the arena with Damianos. But afterwards Damianos had him in his chambers for six hours.' 'You see? How could a man like that resist a beauty like the Prince?' Guilliame sat back triumphantly. 'Seven hours,' said Lamen, frowning slightly. 'Here — C.S. Pacat

At that time I also had, for a short while, the strength to bear it. But all too soon I lost external sight of the shape of that beautiful man, and I saw him disappear to nothing, so quickly melting away and fusing together that I could not see or observe him outside of me, nor discern him within me. It was to me at that moment as if we were one without distinction. — Hadewijch

I stopped glorifying women as beautiful only if they were also thin. In fact, beautiful was the very last thing I decided I would tell Gigi she was each day, after brilliant, hilarious, curious, creative, and daring. There are so many important things to be in this world, it's unfair to devote so much of what describes us to our body size. — Brittany Gibbons

"Wouldn't it be lovely, Miss Shirley, if some one could just wave a wand and make everybody beautiful?" she said wistfully. "Just fancy my feelings, Miss Shirley, if I suddenly fould myself beautiful! But then" ... with a sigh ... "if we were all beauties who would do the work?"
Anne of Windy Poplars — L.M. Montgomery

In October 1941, Mahilue became teh first substantial city in occupied Soviet Belarus where almost all Jews were killed. A German (Austrian) policeman wrote to his wife of his feelings and experiences shooting the city's Jews in the first days of the month. 'During the first try, my hand trembled a bit as I shot, but one gets used to it. By the tenth try I aimed calmly and shot surely at the many women, children, and infants. I kept in mind that I have two infants at home, whom these hordes would treat just the same, if not ten times worse. The death that we gave them was a beautiful quick death, compared to the hellish torments of thousands and thousands in the jails of the GPU. Infants flew in great arcs through the air, and we shot them to pieces in flight, before their bodies fell into the pit and into the water.'
pp. 205-206 — Timothy Snyder

Ginger, truth or dare?"
"Dare."
"Forgive me for taking the idea from Kai, but I dare you to snog Blake-" She modified the request at the insistent stare from her sister. "Oh, come on! Just the teeniest peck on the lips."
I thought she would still refuse, but apparently she wasn't one to outright turn down a dare. She turned to Blake and pointed a finger at him.
"Try to cop a feel and I'll make Anna's chair flip look angelic," she warned.
He grinned and she leaned in, both closing their eyes as she pressed her lips against his for one, two, three seconds. It appeared innocent, but they were shy when they pulled away and sat back.
"Right," Ginger said, clearing her throat. "My turn. Jay, truth or dare?"
"Truth."
"Do you fancy Marna?"
"I'm not sure what that means, but if you're asking if I like her and think she's the most beautiful girl I've ever met and I wish she would move here, then yes."
Marna and I giggled at his brazen, smitten openness. — Wendy Higgins

My reaction to Radiohead isn't as simple as jealousy. Jealousy just burns; Radiohead infuriate me. But if it were only that, I wouldn't go back and listen to those records again and again. Listening to Radiohead makes me fell like I'm a Salieri to their Mozart. Yorke's lyrics make me want to give up. I could never in my wildest dreams find something as beautiful as they find for a single song - let alone album after album. — Dave Matthews

That's why I had a reduction when I was twenty-one," which is when his expression morphed into one of horror.
You'd have thought I told him I made an amazing stew from tiny babies and puppy tongues.
"Why on earth would you do that? That's like God giving you a beautiful gift and you kicking him in the nuts."
I laughed. "God? I thought you were agnostic, Professor."
"I am. But if I could motorboat perfect tits like yours I might be able to find Jesus."
I felt my blush warm my cheeks. "Because Jesus totally lives in my cleavage?"
"Not anymore he doesn't. Your boobs are now too small for him to be comfortable in there." He shook his head, and I couldn't stop laughing. "So selfish, Ziggs, — Christina Lauren

If 'The Wild One' were filmed today, Marlon Brando and the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club would all have to wear helmets. I used to be afraid that when (Hells) Angels became movie stars and Cal the hero of the book, the bikerider would perish on the coffee tables of America. But now I think that this attention doesn't have the strength of reality of the people it aspires to know, and that as long as Harley-Davidsons are manufactured other bikeriders will appear, riding unknown and beautiful through Chicago, into the streets of Cicero. — Danny Lyon

Your essays spoke of beauty, of love, of light and darkness, of joy and sorrow, and of the goodness of life. They were wonderful compositions. I have seldom read any that have touched me more.
To thank you and your teacher Mrs. Ellis, I am sending you what I think is one of the most beautiful and miraculous things in the world - an egg. I have a goose named Felicity and she lays about forty eggs every spring. It takes her almost three months to accomplish this. Each egg is a perfect thing. I am mailing you one of Felicity's eggs. The insides have been removed - blown out - so the egg should last forever. I hope you will enjoy seeing this great egg and loving it. Thank you for sending me your essays about being somebody. I was pleased that so many of you felt the beauty and goodness of the world. If we feel that when we are young, then there is great hope for us when we grow older. — E.B. White

All I could think about as I stood there was that sometimes life gave you a tragedy that burned everything you knew to the ground and changed you completely. But somehow, if you really wanted to, you could learn how to hold your breath as you made your way through the smoke left in its wake and you could keep going. And sometimes, sometimes, you could grow something beautiful from the ashes that were left behind. If you were lucky. — Mariana Zapata

My wife spoke perfect Italian and she was very beautiful and very suave Italian men were crowding around her, talking all the time and if I was to even understand what was going on, I had to learn the language fast. — Clive James

If I were somebody else looking at my character, I'd be like, "She's beautiful." I'm practicing. I'm not succeeding. — Sarah Silverman

This would be a perfect day if Ray were here with us, but he's not far away. He's doing well, and I know he'd like to enjoy yourself, Ana. To all of you, thank you for coming to share my beautiful wife's birthday, the first of many to come. Happy birthday, my love. - Christian Grey — E.L. James

The first two drinks were always wonderfully liberating. You think better. You're braver, and you'll say anything. If you could just hang in there with two or three, it'd be beautiful. The trouble was I couldn't. — Barry Hannah

Mom held me towards them. "Isn't she beautiful? Isn't she absolutely beautiful?"
Perhaps it was hormones talking; more likely, those were the words of a desperate woman who couldn't fathom the monster she had knit together in her room. But I was her monster, and if she didn't claim me, nobody would. — Marie Manilla

petal." I don't look at it that closely. "That blossom started as a seed," she continues. "It was buried deep in the cold, dark ground. One day when the soil was warm and moist, the little seed split apart and began to climb to a world it could not see. Imagine the courage it had! It did not know what it would find when it broke through the surface. The scorching sun? The gardener's blade? The crushing hoof of a cow? But the seed courageously pushed on so that one day, it could become a beautiful flower." She points a finger at me. "You must have the courage of the seed, Anna. Without it, you will stay buried. You will rot and die. It does not matter how smart you are, or how pretty, or if you have money and many friends. If you do not have courage, you will never blossom into the flower you were meant to be. — William Andrews

Curran strode toward me, eyes blazing. "If I let her go, I'll need a replacement. Want to volunteer for the job."
He looked like he wouldn't be taking no for an anser. I swiped Slayer from its sheath and backed away from the edge of the roof. "And be girlfriend number twenty-three soon to be dumped in favor of girlfriend number twenty-four who has slightly bigger boobs? I don't think so."
He kept coming. "Oh Yeah?"
"Yeah, you get these beautiful women, make them dependent on you, and then you dump them. Well, this time a woman left you first, and your enormous ego can't deal with it. And to think that I hoped we could talk like reasonable adults. If we were the last two people on Earth, I'd find myself a moving island so I could get the hell away from you. — Ilona Andrews

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.
I had a thought for no one's but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon — W.B.Yeats

but I want to tell them
that all of this shit
is just debris
leftover when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought
we used to be
and if you can't see anything beautiful about yourself
get a better mirror
look a little closer
stare a little longer
because there's something inside you
that made you keep trying
despite everyone who told you to quit
you built a cast around your broken heart
and signed it yourself
you signed it
"they were wrong"
because maybe you didn't belong to a group or a click
maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything
maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth
to show and tell but never told
because how can you hold your ground
if everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it
you have to believe that they were wrong

they have to be wrong — Shane L. Koyczan

If I were to agree to write the music for your beautiful poem, it would tie your poem up for some years as I have agreements and obligations which I must respect. — Jules Massenet

Masters, holding aloft a hard-boiled egg from the free lunch as if it were a crystal ball, said, "Have you gentlemen ever considered the question of the true nature of the University? Mr. Stoner? Mr. Finch?" Smiling, they shook their heads. "I'll bet you haven't. Stoner, here, I imagine, sees it as a great repository, like a library or a whorehouse, where men come of their free will and select that which will complete them, where all work together like little bees in a common hive. The True, the Good, the Beautiful. They're just around the corner, in the next corridor; they're in the next book, the one you haven't read, or in the next stack, the one you haven't got to. But you'll get to it someday. And when you do - when you do - " He looked at the egg for a moment more, then took a large bite of it and turned to Stoner, his jaws working and his dark eyes bright. — John Edward Williams

If you were to take a plastic bag and place it inside a large bowl, and then, using a wooden spoon, stir the bag around and around the bowl, you could use the expression 'a mixed bag' to describe what you had in front of you, but you would not be using the expression in the same way I am about to use it now. Although 'a mixed bag' sometimes refers to a plastic bag that has been stirred in a bowl, more often it is used to describe a situation that has both good parts and bad parts. An afternoon at a movie theater, for instance, would be a mixed bag if you favourite movie were showing but if you had to eat gravel instead of popcorn. A trip to the zoo would be a very mixed bag if the weather were beautiful, but all the man- and woman-eating lions were running around loose. — Lemony Snicket

My soul cried out for Ash, for his courage and determination; for the way his eyes thawed when he looked at me, as if I were the only person in the world; for that beautiful, wounded spirit I saw beneath the cold exterior he showed the world. — Julie Kagawa

Suddenly, as though in a dream, this apparition, this double apparition, approached me. The two most beautiful people in the world were floating toward me, smiling. It was as if they were angelic visitors. I thought to myself, 'If there is anything I can do to keep them as beautiful as they are, I will do it.' — Gilbert Seldes

Opening myself to my own love and to life's tough loveliness not only was the most delicious, amazing thing on earth but also was quantum. It would radiate out to a cold, hungry world. Beautiful moments heal, as do real cocoa, Pete Seeger, a walk on old fire roads. All I ever wanted since I arrived here on earth were the same things I needed as a baby, to go from cold to warm, lonely to held, the vessel to the giver, empty to full. You can change the world with a hot bath, if you sink into it from a place of knowing you are worth profound care, even when you're dirty and rattled. Who knew? — Anne Lamott

But my beautiful boy was broken. I eased my hand free from his and leaned down to brush a kiss across his lips, sealing a promise that I'd made to him. "I love you so much. So much. You brought magic into my world the first day I saw you, and every day since - even when we were apart and I didn't want to remember. I won't let them take the magic away, Kes. I won't." I kissed him again, feeling the soft prickle of stubbled cheeks. "I'll be back tomorrow, because you'll never be rid of me. Not ever." And if I listened very carefully, I could hear his heart beating out a message, Love you more. — Jane Harvey-Berrick

I often wish I'd got on better with your father,' he said.
But he never liked anyone who
our friends,' said Clarissa; and could have bitten her tongue for thus reminding Peter that he had wanted to marry her.
Of course I did, thought Peter; it almost broke my heart too, he thought; and was overcome with his own grief, which rose like a moon looked at from a terrace, ghastly beautiful with light from the sunken day. I was more unhappy than I've ever been since, he thought. And as if in truth he were sitting there on the terrace he edged a little towards Clarissa; put his hand out; raised it; let it fall. There above them it hung, that moon. She too seemed to be sitting with him on the terrace, in the moonlight. — Virginia Woolf

If you were perfect, I'd tattoo this on my chest. If you were beautiful, I'd carve this into a tree trunk. If you were nice, I'd write this in a letter. But you're none of those - — Bo Burnham

Beautiful dreams - if the world were more beautiful they would come true - But the world is relentless & cruel - people are - they must be, I suppose, or they could not live. — Alfred Stieglitz

It seemed that there was no time to catch up with all the things that were happening. I would be at the construction workers' demonstration one day and then marching with the welfare mothers the next. We got down with everything - the rent strikes, the sit-ins, the takeover of the Harlem state office building, whatever it was. If we agreed with it, we would try to give active support in some way. The more active i became, the more i liked it. It was like medicine, making me well, making me whole ...
My energy just couldn't stop dancing. I was caught up in the music of the struggle and i wanted to dance. I was never bored and never lonely, and the brothers and sisters who became my friends were so beautiful to me. — Assata Shakur

Beautiful Hannah. If you were mine, I'd lay you on silk sheets and wrap you up in ropes of pearls, and feed you honey from a silver spoon. Of course, you wouldn't be able to make all your high-minded judgments if you were a fallen woman ... but you wouldn't care. Because I would pleasure you, Hannah, every night, all night, until you forgot your own name. Until you were willing to do things that would shock you in the light of day. I would debauch you from your head down to your innocent little toes-"
"Oh, I despise you ... — Lisa Kleypas

If I were to live in Africa, serving the poor, the number-one thing I'd miss wouldn't be running water or electricity - it would be style ... being able to get dressed up and feel beautiful. — Evangeline Lilly

When I composed those verses I was preoccupied less with music than with an experience - an experience in which that beautiful musical allegory had shown its moral side, had become an awakening and a summons to a life vocation. The imperative form of the poem which specially displeases you is not the expression of a command and a will to teach but a command and warning directed towards myself. Even if you were not fully aware of this, my friend, you could have read it in the closing lines. I experienced an insight, you see, a realization and an inner vision, and wished to impress and hammer the moral of this vision into myself. That is the reason why this poem has remained in my memory. Whether the verses are good or bad they have achieved their aim, for the warning has lived on within me and has not been forgotten. It rings anew for me again to-day, and that is a wonderful little experience which your scorn cannot take away from me. — Hermann Hesse

I thought the force of my wanting must wake ye, surely. And then ye did come ... " He stopped, looking at me with eyes gone soft and dark. "Christ, Claire, ye were so beautiful, there on the stair, wi' your hair down and the shadow of your body with the light behind ye ... ." He shook his head slowly. "I did think I should die, if I didna have ye," he said softly. "Just then. — Diana Gabaldon

I leaned against the carved banisters and listened to the music and felt quite different from any way I have ever felt before
softer, very beautiful and as if a great many men were in love with me and I might very easily be in love with them. — Dodie Smith

I'll be back," she said. "Very soon."
He needed to reply. He needed to say Good, come back; better, Don't go; or better still, I'll join you. He wanted to say, Your neck is beautiful. He wanted to say, I never ever thought my life would hold this, and if your leaving is what I must give for what I was given, then it was worth it.
But the children were all around and Mr Abasi was calling out and motioning for her to come, and anyway, he knew now, if he hadn't known before, that there were limitations to words - words in the air or on a page. — Masha Hamilton

But we are the same, yes, but were not. We are three completely different people, we play three completely different instruments and all epically fail when trying to play each other's" he said as Daniel and I nodded slowly. That was far to true. "I wrote this piece because I love that these three instruments that make three different sounds, are played three different ways and look different, can create such a beautiful harmony if they're played correctly" he swallowed again then looked at Daniel and I "And I think although we are three different people, who - usually - look different, and who come out with three different kinds of ridiculous-ness" he said and we both laughed "If we come together we work perfectly with each other and can in some senses create a beautiful harmony — R.J. Seeley

She looked ... She looked young, and- and
" I glanced down at Rossana gazing up at me, lips parted, eyes shining, her hair loose around her shoulders, and the next words I spoke were intended with no artifice at all. "She is almost as beautiful as you."
There was laughter, and I looked up, confused.
"If you wish to pay court to my daughter, Matteo, you must first speak to me," Captain dell'Orte said in mock severity.
Rossana's face colored pink.
"Elizabetta is also very beautiful," I said quickly, thinking to cover any embarassment, but also because it was true.
The adults roared with laughter.
"Now Matteo seeks to woo both girls with one compliment. — Theresa Breslin

You're beautiful. You walk wonderfully and if I were here and saw you now for the first time I'd be in love with you. If I saw you for the first time everything would turn over inside of me and I'd ache right through my chest. — Ernest Hemingway,

At first I thought I saw the sun setting in the east ... Then I realized that what I saw was a full moon rising just as the sun was going down. Each of them was standing on its edge, with the most wonderful light between them. It seemed as if you could touch it, as if there were palpable currents of light passing back and forth, or if there were great taut skeins of light suspended between them ... We just stood there until the sun was down and the moon was up. They seemed to float on the horizon for quite a long time, I suppose because they were both so bright you couldn't get a clear look at them. And that grave, and my father and I, were exactly between them ... My father said, I would never have thought this place could be beautiful. I'm glad to know that. — Marilynne Robinson

I knew from the beginning that we'd be addicted after all." His amber eyes bore straight through me. "I just didn't know whether we'd be at a better place than we were before."
We are. I don't even have to say the words. He knows the answer too. We're at the best place we've ever been, reaching a stasis together. It's beautiful up here, and even if I fear falling, it's nice to know I've been down that road before. And I can always walk to the top again. — Krista Ritchie

-I don't know that thin and pretty is what Nat is supposed to be, though. Does that make any sense?"
If she'd been holding on to any illusions about how much she liked Vince Grasso-not lusted for him, which she also did-that last speech would have cinched it. "It makes perfect sense. She's beautiful in her own way, but pretty is something ... else. And I've had friends who were really pretty-it didn't always help them all that much.'
"Yeah," he said. "My wife was pretty, and she was miserable her whole life. I just want my girls to be happy. Be themselves, you know, whatever it is. — Barbara O'Neal

Ah, you pitiful, pitiful creatures! Beautiful family! Nobler far than stupid men ... " he cried softly to himself. What was he doing here with his arrow? Cornering these creatures? Armor
an armor to brag about! Save his dignity before that armor-maker because of a promise? Foolish ... foolish! If the old man jeered at him, why should it matter anymore; a common suit of armor would do as well! Armor did not make a man, nor did it signify valor.
"Dumb creatures that you are, how magnificent! Sorrow, love
parental love incarnate! Were I that fox
what if Tokiko and Shigemori were trapped like this? Even the beast can rise above itself
could I as much? — Eiji Yoshikawa

Sometimes I have the feeling that we're in one room with two opposite doors and each of us holds the handle of one door, one of us flicks an eyelash and the other is already behind his door, and now the first one has but to utter a word ad immediately the second one has closed his door behind him and can no longer be seen. He's sure to open the door again for it's a room which perhaps one cannot leave. If only the first one were not precisely like the second, if he were calm, if he would only pretend not to look at the other, if he slowly set the room in order as though it were a room like any other; but instead he does exactly the same as the other at his door, sometimes even both are behind the doors and the the beautiful room is empty. Franz Kafka (in a letter to Milena Jesenska) — Edmund White

Echo bent over the table to make her second shot. Her beautiful breasts were right there for me to see, but i wanted to do more than observe, i wanted to ...
"You should put your tongue back in your mouth. You 'll get all cotton-mouthed if it dries out."
"I can't help it you 're hot." I loved it when she dished it out. — Katie McGarry

If I were an actress today at the age of 18, I would never make it, because now our young actresses all seem to be very beautiful and very talented right away. — Jamie Lee Curtis

The servants were evil," he said, recalling the tale the way the whiskey priest they sent to Creedmoor told it, sitting with Mr. Persichetti at the nurses' station late into the night, those watery blue eyes forever bloodshot and sleepless. "They told the crazy chieftain that he should marry his beautiful daughter instead. Which he tried to do." ("If you get my meaning," the priest had said.) "But Dymphna ran off to Belgium." He saw her grimace and purse her lips, her face seemed to swell with color. "Her crazy father followed her," he said, tightening his own grip on her hand. "I guess he cut off her head. — Alice McDermott

I remember her, not a girl but the girl. The brains behind the all time top ten comic book vixens only wish they could conjure a a siren the likes of Susan Glenn, beneath my feet my own private earthquake registered an eight when Susan Glenn was near. In her presence all was beautiful before she arrived turned grotesque and in her shadows others became goblinesque, if she approached Susan Glenn she didn't walk she floated, accompanied by Pyrotechnics spectacals that left me feeling a foot tall. She embodied every desireable quality I have ever wanted. In my mind I was a peasant before a Queen. And so Susan Glenn and I were never a thing, if I could do it again, I'd do it differently. — Keifer Sutherland

In this life, we reap the results of everything that we do; even if the things that we do and the things that we become, are the direct results of circumstances that we could have never controlled, in the first place. They say we are never given more than we can handle; but I don't believe that. We are often given more than we can handle, and that's why so many of us are so broken. The jar breaks when there's too much to handle. The only beauty in all of this, is that jars can be repaired with gold; and because of that, they can become even more beautiful than they were before. — C. JoyBell C.

Personally, I like to think my brother is having a college experience like they do in the movies. I don't mean the big fraternity party kind of movie. More like the movie where the guy meets a smart girl who wears a lot of sweaters and drinks cocoa. They talk about books and issues and kiss in the rain. I think something like that would be very good for him, especially if the girl were unconventionally beautiful. They are the best kind of girls, I think. I personally find 'super models' strange. I don't know why this is. — Stephen Chbosky

If I had to wish for something, just one thing, it would be that Hannah would never see Tate the way I did. Never see Tate's beautiful, lush hair turn brittle, her skin sallow, her teeth ruined by anything she could get her hands on that would make her forget. That Hannah would never count how many men there were, or how vile humans can be to one another. That she would never see the moments in my life that were full of neglect, and fear, and revulsion, moments I can never go back to because I know they will slow me down for the rest of my life if I let myself remember them for one moment. Tate, who had kept Hannah alive that night, reading her the story of Jem Finch and Mrs. Dubose. And suddenly I know I have to go. But this time without being chased by the Brigadier, without experiencing the kindness of a postman from Yass, and without taking along a Cadet who will change the way I breath for the rest of my life. — Melina Marchetta

Music, to me, was - is - representative of everything I like most in life. It's beautiful and fun, but very rigorous. If you wanted to be good you had to work like crazy. It was a real relationship between effort and reward. My musical life experiences were just as important to me, in terms of forming my development, as my political experiences or my academic life. — William J. Clinton

t was beautiful, being there with Elliott. It was like there was nothing except him and me. I remember his palms, his chest, his chin, but it was like we were more than just our bodies. As if our essence was there in the darkness. — Jaclyn Moriarty

I think every person has their own identity and beauty. Everyone being different is what is really beautiful. If we were all the same, it would be boring. — Tila Tequila

He was sound asleep, his long legs stretched out in front of him, the blessed fire blazing, an empty bottle of wine by his side. He hadn't been shaved recently, and he looked rumpled, dissolute and beautiful. Like
a fallen angel. She moved to stand in front of him and pointed the pistol directly at his heart.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," he murmured, and then he opened his extraordinary eyes. "It's always
unwise to shoot the man you're in love with. — Anne Stuart

That was my first kiss ... like, ever."
"That was your first kiss?"
"You couldn't tell?" My eyes widened in utter surprise.
"You seemed nervous, yeah. But I had no idea," he said with a laugh. "Is it a total guy move if I think that's pretty awesome?"
"That you were my first kiss? Why?" I smiled, the tension lessening with each laugh that came from his beautiful mouth. He squeezed my hand in his.
"Because I'm planning to be your last. — Melissa Brown

If I were flying, I would travel to a perfect place. A place with frosted cakes and beautiful flowers and excellent trees to climb and absolutely no doldrums. — Kyo Maclear

Mom and I were walking onteh beach and I was explaining to her how I wantd to "GET OVER all my INSECURITIES" and "La La ... La.." ... and she looked at me and said "Sabrina, does anyone realy feel good about themselves for MORE than 5 minutes?" We both laughed. I was releaved to know she felt that way becuae she seems SO graceful, calm and beautiful, which she is.. but also full of so much more. Auestions, doubts + WONDER. I think that if we can aim for just five minutes a day of complete acceptance of ourselves, we are doing very well! — Sabrina Ward Harrison

[The maid] went on and on about how you and three casks of wine and three women spent the week before our wedding trying to...you know"--Adrienne muttered an unintelligible word--"your brains out."
"To what my brains out?"
"You know." Adrienne rolled her eyes.
"I'm afraid I don't. What was that word again?"
"Adrienne looked at him sharply. Was he teasing her? Were his eyes alight with mischief? That half-smile curving his beautiful mouth could absolutely melt the sheet she was clutching, not to mention her will. "Apparently one of them succeeded, because if you had any brains left you'd get out of my sight now," she snapped.
"It wasn't three." Hawk swallowed a laugh.
"No?"
"It was five."
"Adrienne's jaw clenched. She held her fingers up again. "Fourth--this will be a marriage in name only. Period."
"Casks of wine, I meant."
"You are not funny. — Karen Marie Moning

I leaned forward. "How did I turn out? Are you proud of the monster you made?"
Roland smiled. Hugh and Landon were right. It was like the sun had risen. Like digging a hole in your backyard and finding a glittering jewel in the dirt.
"Child, my dangerous one, my beautiful one. You've claimed your city. You shouldn't have been able to do that for another hundred years. I'm so proud that my pride could topple mountains. If you let me, I would show you to the world. I would show the world to you."
"So I could see it through your eyes?"
"So you could see it through your own. — Ilona Andrews

There is a sense of danger in leaving what you know, even if what you know isn't much. These mill towns with their narrow lanes and often narrow minds were all I really knew and I feared that if I left it behind, I would lose it and not find anything to replace it. The other reason I didn't want to go was because I wanted to be the kind of person who stays, who builds a stable and predictable life. But I wasn't one of the people, nor would I ever be.
I had a vision for my life. It wasn't clear, but it was beautiful and involved leaving my history and my poverty behind me. I wasn't happy about who I was or where I was, but I didn't worry about it. It didn't define me. We're always in the making. God always has us on his anvil, melting, bending and shaping us for another purpose.
It was time to change, to find a new purpose. — John William Tuohy

If I were pressed, I would admit that she was beautiful, in a dead bride sort of way. — Melika Dannese Lux

I advise everyone to choose a religion based upon the beauty that the religion has brought to the world. There is much to be said about every religion, there is much evil in history written about every religion, and at the end of the day, you're only going to find out which one works after you're dead and if you're lucky, that won't happen soon! Simply put, you believe in the things that you believe in right now, because you were indoctrinated with fear from a very young age, forward. You fear straying a path that you were told you should walk on. So what path should you really walk on? Walk on the path that has created, is creating, and will be creating - beauty. The only real sign of anything worthwhile, is beauty. The true religion is the belief in what is beautiful. So if something creates a beauty in your heart and in the world - walk that path. — C. JoyBell C.

I didn't like the looks of those other grave robbers. You were the first women who's noticed me in years and I thought you were beautiful."
"Are you flirting?"
"If I were alive, perhaps," he replied, "but as it is, I don't think we could be more than friends. — Amy Neftzger

4. The whole Icarus-flying-too-near-the-sun-and-plummeting-out-of-the-sky thing? That's real. Same with the Sirens who lure you to death with their irresistible song, and the odalisque so beautiful anyone who looks at her dies. And remember: as badass as Grendel was, Beowulf hadn't seen anything until he went up against Grendel's mother. I know, I know - I thought they were just myths too. But the fact is, sometimes, if you don't want to meet a tragic end, your only option is to avert your gaze, tie yourself to the mast with cotton in your ears, or ascend a little less close to the Vault of Heaven. — Todd Hanson

Alai saw the tears but had the grace not to say so. "They're fartheads, Ender, they won't even let you take anything you own."
Ender grinned and didn't cry after all. "Think I should strip and go naked?"
Alai laughed, too.
On impulse Ender hugged him, tight, almost as if he were Valentine. He even thought of Valentine then and wanted to go home. "I don't want to go," he said.
Alai hugged him back. "I understand them, Ender. You are the best of us. Maybe they in a hurry to teach you everything."
"They don't want to teach me everything," Ender said. "I wanted to learn what it was like to have a friend."
Alai nodded soberly. "Always my friend, always the best of my friends," he said. Then he grinned. "Go slice up the buggers."
"Yeah," Ender smiled back.
Alai suddenly kissed Ender on the cheek and whispered in his ear, "Salaam. — Orson Scott Card

What matters is to be natural and calm
In happiness and in unhappiness,
To feel as if feeling were seeing,
To think as if thinking were walking,
And to remember, when death comes, that each day dies,
And the sunset is beautiful, and so is the night that
remains ...
That's how it is and how I want it to be ... — Fernando Pessoa

Though I love you to the core of my being, so thoroughly that every cell comprising me aches to be near you, I must accept that we can never be together. For our existence parallels the sun and the moon - a temptation in constant, beautiful view, yet if the sun were ever to kiss the moon it would devour the heavenly orb whole. Oh, my darling, if only I were the moon! Then I would dare taste your lips and be happy for my last and final joy! But alas, I am the sun, and I will not venture to destroy the one I love. — Richelle E. Goodrich

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

You were just a beautiful woman. Now you're my beautiful woman. What you got under your clothes is for me. No one else. They don't look. They don't touch. That's the deal. Yeah?"
I stared at him, speechless, which was a good thing because if I had words, I would have said them so loudly the neighbors would hear.
"Now," he went on, either not feeling or not caring about the badder than bad vibes emanating from me directly toward him, "go put on a tank."
That's when I found my words.
"Maybe I should go put on my ragged white dress and stone necklace and you can put on your leopard skin tunic and we can pedal in our stone car to the roadhouse before you go bowling with Barney and I go shopping with Betty, Fred. — Kristen Ashley

I prefer to use 'The Medieval Scapini Tarot' deck produced by U.S. Games Systems Inc., Stamford, Connecticut. The cards are beautiful, captivating and of excellent quality, and I endorse them wholeheartedly.

I should add that I have no connection with U.S. Games Systems, and this is an unbiased endorsement. That having been said, if U.S. Games Systems were appreciative of my comments, and offered me many free packs of cards (or large sums of money) as a charming gesture of goodwill, I should be happy to accept such tokens without compromising my integrity in any way. They might like to bear in mind that in future editions of this book my endorsements may have 'evolved' in the direction of other card companies who are, perhaps, a little more generous in their appreciation of my valuable judgements. — Ian Rowland

I'm with you because you're smart and beautiful, and you are not like anyone I know. No matter how hard things are, you throw yourself into them. During Midnight Games you walked into a cage with trained killers not knowing if your curses would work, because you knew other people were counting on you. That's what you do. You step up. — Nalini Singh

I have an unfortunate character; whether it is my upbringing that made me like that or God who created me so, I do not know. I know only that if I cause unhappiness to others, I myself am no less happy. I realize this is poor consolation for them - but the fact remains that it is so. In my early youth, after leaving the guardianship of my parents, I plunged into all the pleasures money could buy, and naturally these pleasures grew distasteful to me. Then I went into high society, but soon enough grew tired of it; I fell in love with beautiful society women and was loved by them, but their love only aggravated my imagination and vanity while my heart remained desolate ... I began to read and to study, but wearied of learning, too; I saw that neither fame nor happiness depended on it in the slightest, for the happiest people were the ignorant, and fame was a matter of luck, to achieve which you only had to be shrewd ... — Mikhail Lermontov

If I'd known you'd look so beautiful, I would've gotten dressed up," Loki teased when Finn and Thomas brought him into the War Room. Finn shoved him into a seat unnecessarily hard,but Loki didn't protest.
"Don't get familiar with the Princess, Duncant told him,giving him a stony look.
"My apologies," Loki said. "I wouldn't want to get familiar with anyone."
Loki looked about the room. Duncan, Finn, Thomas, Tove,the Chancellor, and I were the ones set to meet Sara. The rest of the house was on standby, should we need them,but we didn't want to look like we were ambushing Sara when she arrived.
"Did you change your mind and decide to execute me?" Loki asked,looking us over. "Because you all look like you're going to a funeral."
"Not now," I said, fidgeting with my bracelet and watching the clock.
"Then when,Princess?" Loki asked. "Because we only have about fifteen minutes until I leave."
I rolled my eyes and ignored him. — Amanda Hocking

If they're beautiful I don't much mind if they're not true. It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as to your sense of the aesthetic. I wanted Betty to become a Roman Catholic, I should have liked to see her converted in a crown of paper flowers, but she's hopelessly Protestant. Besides, religion is a matter of temperament; you will believe anything if you have the religious turn of mind, and if you haven't it doesn't matter what beliefs were instilled into you, you will grow out of them. Perhaps religion is the best school of morality. It is like one of those drugs you gentlemen use in medicine which carries another in solution: it is of no efficacy in itself, but enables the other to be absorbed. You take your morality because it is combined with religion; you lose the religion and the morality stays behind. A man is more likely to be a good man if he has learned goodness through the love of God than through a perusal of Herbert Spencer." This — William Somerset Maugham

I am the entertainer, I've come to do my show You've heard my latest record, it's been on the radio It took me years to write it, they were the best years of my life It was a beautiful song but it ran too long If you're gonna have a hit you gotta make it fit So they cut it down to 3:05. — Billy Joel

If I were a painter, I would paint beautiful bodies - I would paint nipples, and I would paint Bibles. Am I going to say, 'I'm not going to paint this woman's neck because people will think I just want to lick on necks?' Please! That's not what art is about. — Will.i.am

When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park we saw a few daffodils close to the waterside. But as we went along there were more and yet more and at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a county turnpike toad. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew about the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake. — Dorothy Wordsworth

It is this that ruins churches, that you do not seek to hear sermons that touch the heart, but sermons that will delight your ears with their intonation and the structure of their phrases, just as if you were listening to singers and lute-players. And we preachers humor your fancies, instead of trying to crush them. We act like a father who gives a sick child a cake or an ice, or something else that is merely nice to eat
just because he asks for it; and takes no pains to give him what is good for him; and then when the doctors blame him says, 'I could not bear to hear my child cry.' ... That is what we do when we elaborate beautiful sentences, fine combinations and harmonies, to please and not to profit, to be admired and not to instruct, to delight and not to touch you, to go away with your applause in our ears, and not to better your conduct. — John Chrysostom

His dark eyes challenged me. They were weapons that could hurt me. Here was the worst thing about them: I could tell that if Johnafter loved you, his dark eyes would be beautiful and friendly and warm. So every time he cut me down with a look that was cold and unfriendly and ugly, it was a double insult, a reminder of what I could never have. I found myself avoiding his dark eyes when I could. — Jennifer Echols