Painfully Beautiful Quotes & Sayings

God, but the coast here was painfully beautiful, the dark lush greens of the fir trees piercing his brain, the half-raging sky and sea, the surge of salt water against the rocks twinned to the urgent wash of blood through his arteries as he waited for her to kill him or hear him out. Seditious thoughts: there would be nothing too terrible about dying out here, about becoming part of all of this. — Jeff VanderMeer

Why did the world go on being so beautiful in spite of the ugliness he had experienced? The lake was beautiful, serenely beautiful. The forest was beautiful, greenly beautiful. Lake and forest, the whole shimmering world was painfully beautiful. He loved this world, but he was too hurt to enjoy it. — William Steig

As the sunlight raced across the brilliant Savannah sky, the day unfolded like a beautiful yet painfully wrapped gift. Momma had left this world and set herself free, and in doing so, she had set me free too. As much as I missed her and wished I could hear her laughter one more time, I believed she was out there in the big bright somewhere, watching me, cheering for me. Loving me. — Beth Hoffman

I wish we would all just fall apart so I wouldn't have to listen to the downfall happen, so slowly, so painfully. — Hannah Moskowitz

December 26, 7:40 p.m.
Dear America,
I've been thinking of our first kiss. I suppose I should say first kisses, but what I mean is the second, the one I was actually invited to give you. Did I ever tell you how I felt that night? It wasn't just getting my first kiss ever; it was getting to have that first kiss with you. I've seen so much, America, had access to the corners of our planet. But never have I come across anything so painfully beautiful as that kiss. I wish it was something I could catch with a net or place in a book. I wish it was something I could save and share with the world so I could tell the universe: this is what it's like; this is how it feels when you fall.
These letters are so embarrassing. I'll have to burn them before you get home.
Maxon — Kiera Cass

From inside the tavern came the sounds of a fiddle being tuned, various plucks and tentative bowings, then a slow and groping attempt at Aura Lee, interrupted every few notes by unplanned squeaks and howls. Nevertheless the beautiful and familiar tune was impervious to poor performance, and Inman thought how painfully young it sounded, as if the pattern of its notes allowed no room to imagine a future clouded and tangled and diminished. — Charles Frazier

Your sadness doesn't make you less of a human being. In fact, it makes you more. More expansive. More connected. Painfully beautiful. Raw. Open. Completely alive. — Panache Desai

She walked down the basement steps. She saw an imaginary framed photo seep into the wall - a quiet-smiled secret. No more than a few meters, it was a long walk to the drop sheets and the assortment of paint cans that shielded Max Vandenburg. She removed the sheets closest to the wall until there was a small corridor to look through. The first part of him she saw was his shoulder, and through the slender gap, she slowly, painfully, inched her hand in until it rested there. His clothing was cool. He did not wake.
She could feel his breathing and his shoulder moving up and down ever so slightly. For a while, she watched him. Then she sat and leaned back.
Sleepy air seemed to have followed her.
The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder.
They breathed.
German and Jewish lungs. — Markus Zusak

You're painfully beautiful and all mine. Kiss me. — Jodi Ellen Malpas

So for the people in your life who have not known your worth, who have been reckless with your heart or fallen painfully short of your expectations, sincerely wish them well, forgive yourself for holding on to it and preventing yourself from really living, forgive them for their shortcomings (as well as your own), scoop up that huge beautiful life lesson and all the pieces of your heart, and sail on. You have mountains to move, dreams to dream, and a world to change, even if the only world is your own. — Alexis Jones

[But] I have come across anything so painfully beautiful as that kiss. I wish it was something I could save and share with the world so I could tell the universe: this is what it's like; this is how it feels when you fall. — Kiera Cass

And he married the Echo one fortunate morn,
And Woman, their beautiful daughter, was born!
The daughter of Sunshine and Echo she came
With a voice like a song, with a face like a flame;
With a face like a flame, and a voice like a song,
And happy was Man, but it was not for long!
For weather's a painfully changeable thing,
Not always the child of the Echo would sing;
And the face of the Sun may be hidden with mist,
And his child can be terribly cross if she list.
And unfortunate man had to learn with surprise
That a frown's not peculiar to masculine eyes;
That the sweetest of voices can scold and sneer,
And cannot be answered - like men - with a spear — Andrew Lang

Women are like trees, growing slowly over time. So many rings creating layers of maturity as their branches spread and reach out to the sky. Motherhood prunes those branches. Sometimes it prunes them back hard and painfully. But if you let go and trust in the good of what it means to be a mother, if you can trust in the knowledge learned from the hard lessons, then faith and belief will carry you through. And in the end, you will grow fuller and more beautiful from the, sometimes harsh, pruning of motherhood. — P.R. Newton

But even if, as Johnson argues, power and dominance serve no meaningful purpose, they always incur costs. In biology, the cost can be painfully visible. During courtship, the argus cock pheasant spreads his large secondary wing feathers, which are decorated with beautiful eye spots; the bigger they are, the more they stimulate the female. And the longer the feathers, the more progeny the cock will produce. So the more beautiful cocks produce more descendants. That should be a competitive advantage. But the evolution of the argus pheasant has run itself into a blind alley because the most gorgeous cock has feathers so huge and unwieldy that they may cause him to be eaten by a predator, because he can't fly away fast enough. Oskar Heinroth, the teacher of Konrad Lorenz, commented: 'Next to the wings of the argus pheasant, the hectic life of western civilized man is the most stupid product of intra-specific selection! — Margaret Heffernan

The world seems to me excruciatingly, almost painfully beautiful at times, and the goodness and kindness of people often exceed that which even I expect. — Lois W.

For a fraction of a second, we were together, and it had felt divine. Not nice. Not safe. Not taken for granted. It was short and beautiful and painfully memorable. Like the tree I was obsessed with. — L.J. Shen

Why? Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths? Why does the memory of years of happy marriage turn to gall when our partner is revealed to have had a lover all those years? Because such a situation makes it impossible to be happy? But we were happy! Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily. Because happiness is only real if it lasts forever? Because things always end painfully if they contained pain, conscious or unconscious, all along? But what is unconscious, unrecognized pain? — Bernhard Schlink

As a reader I feel included a lot in Julie Carr's hard and beautiful book. I can pretty much hear its author speak - a whispering that enables us into its world ... a masterfully sutured journey, painfully useful. Sarah - Of Fragments and Lines is a book I know I will return to. And urge it on my friends who have lives too and write in them. — Eileen Myles

And now he could not marry Lady Lankouwen or Rainhilda or this beautiful maiden in front of him. Because he was in love ... desperately, hopelessly, painfully in love ... with the duke's daughter. — Melanie Dickerson