Rare But Beautiful Quotes & Sayings

Exceptions to the traditions of dumpy dignity and fake learnedness in law review writing are as rare as they are beautiful. Once in a while a Thomas Reed Powell gets away with an imaginary judicial opinion that gives a real twist to the lion's tail. Once in a while a Thurman Arnold forgets his footnotes as though to say that if people do not believe or understand him that is their worry and not his. But even such mild breaches of etiquette as these are tolerated gingerly and seldom, and are likely to be looked at a little askance by the writers' more pious brethren. — Fred Rodell

A black dress is beautiful! It's a good choice. It could be the wrong choice at certain events or situations, but it's very rare that you see a girl who looks bad in a black dress. — Olivier Theyskens

There's a funny thing about light and darkness
like hope, you can never blot out either one completely. They always exist, side by side, bright light making shadows darker, darkness making the light more beautiful, a tempting siren call. I can't hate the dark parts of myself. They are the things that showed me how special and rare the bright flames of trust, loyalty, friendship, and love were. My darkness showed me how to love Rob. But now I choose light and fire and love. No I choose freedom. — A.C. Gaughen

Nearly all black and brown skins are beautiful, but a beautiful white skin is rare. — Mark Twain

So many times you see beautiful lovemaking scenes with a lot of exposure or an awkward lovemaking scene, but I think it's very rare that you see it private. — Ang Lee

It's very rare that people are exactly who they appear to be. Venice has a lot of that too, but the face of it is quite beautiful, interesting, and textured. — Will Arnett

If I feel really authentically in my body, then everything seems to click. But, sometimes I can only get into that, if the atmosphere is already conducive to that with the sound and all that stuff. There are moments where, as a performer, you're on stage and you feel like you're exactly where you're meant to be in the universe. It's a rare and beautiful thing when it happens. — Ben Lee

I was sitting at the bar of the Hegira that night when Ginny came in. The barkeep, an ancient sad-eyed patriarch named Jose, had just poured me another drink, and I was having one of those rare moments any serious drunk can tell you about. A piece of real quiet. Jose's cheeks bristled because he didn't shave very often, and his apron was dingy because it didn't get washed very often, and his fingernails had little crescents of grime under them. The glass he poured for me wasn't all that clean. But the stuff he poured was golden-amber and beautiful, like distilled sunlight, and it made the whole place soothing as sleep - which drunks know how to value because they don't get much of it. — Stephen R. Donaldson

Okay. It's not hard to find a beautiful woman, right? Definitely not hard to find a smart woman. And there are definitely some women with good hearts. But in my experience, it's extremely rare to find the whole package. — Penelope Ward

What they had was rare, imperfect and beautiful and scary all at once. It was hard to say those things out loud and know the right words to use. But that was okay. Because when two people found each other, two people who were meant to be, words didn't even matter anymore. They just knew. And that was the luckiest thing of all. — Piper Vaughn

He cupped my jaw with his hand. It was warm, and I didn't pull away. "And then there are the rare ones who know love, who understand it. Who freely give of themselves, demanding only a return of that love, that trust." His faultless blue eyes never blinked, and I held my breath. "It can be beautiful, Rachel, when there is trust and love. No one is bound. No one loses his or her will. No one becomes less. Both become more than they can be alone. But it is so rare, so beautiful when it happens. — Kim Harrison

The last lesson we must learn before we don our maester's chains. The glass candle is meant to represent truth and learning, rare and beautiful and fragile things. It is made in the shape of a candle to remind us that a maester must cast light wherever he serves, and it is sharp to remind us that knowledge can be dangerous. Wise men may grow arrogant in their wisdom, but a maester must always remain humble. The glass candle reminds us of that as well. Even after he has said his vow and donned his chain and gone forth to serve, a maester will think back on the darkness of his vigil and remember how nothing that he did could make the candle burn ... for even with knowledge, some things are not possible. — George R R Martin

This is what it means to be a fanatic - but a fanatic, that is to say, in a very special sense. It has little in common with the obsession of the politician or the artist, for instance, for both of these understand in a greater or lesser degree the impulse which drives them. But the sportsman fanatic - that is another matter entirely.
His thoughts fixed solely on a vision of that mounted trophy against the wall, the eyes now dead that were once living, the tremulous nostrils stilled, the sensitive pricked ears closed to sound at the instant when the rifle shot echoed from the naked rocks, this man hunts his quarry through some instinct unknown even to himself.
Stephen was a sportsman of this kind. It was not the skill needed that drove him, nor the delight and excitement of the stalk itself, but a desire, so I told myself, to destroy something beautiful and rare. Hence his obsession with chamois. ("The Chamois") — Daphne Du Maurier

You're arguing that the fragile, rare thing is beautiful simply because it is fragile and rare. But that's a lie, and you know it. — John Green

The love for equals is a human thing
of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles. The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing
the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world. The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing
to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints. And then there is the love for the enemy
love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured's love for the torturer. This is God's love. It conquers the world. — Frederick Buechner

I loved playing (Aaron Echols on 'Veronica Mars.') I was really sad when I got my head blown off, but ... that seems to happen to me. I seem to be murdered on all of these shows. But, okay, as long as the checks don't bounce, I'm all right with that. Besides, when Aaron Echols was killed, as I recall, he'd just had sex with a beautiful young girl, he was smoking a Cuban cigar and drinking a rare, 18-year-old brandy, and watching himself on television. If you gotta go, I think that's probably the way to go. — Harry Hamlin

This inability to think created the possibility for many ordinary men to commit evil deeds on a gigantic scale, the like of which had never been seen before. The manifestation of the wind of thought is not knowledge but the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And I hope that thinking gives people the strength to prevent catastrophes in these rare moments when the chips are down. — Hannah Arendt

Later when I thought of the chickens, one of those rare pale blue eggs rose up into my throat. The chickens had been part of our family, and the egg in my throat was the feeling of something missing. It was hard and smooth and heavy, but also so fragile it might break and make me cry. It was the feeling of growing out of a favorite shirt, milk spilled on the floor, the last bit of honey in the jar, falling apple blossoms. It was the lump in the throat behind everything beautiful in life. — Melissa Coleman

But it is a rare and beautiful thing when we choose to offer love in situations when most people would choose to scorn or ignore. — Lysa TerKeurst

How would you like it if I said to you, 'It kills me to say this, but you're actually a tiny bit beautiful?" he had asked, pissed off.
She hadn't said anything then, which was rare for her.
"Would you have been lying?" She said after a long silence.
"Lying about what?"
More quiet.
"About me being a tiny bit beautiful."
"Shit, yeah."
-
But later that night, he had sent her a message on MSN.
Of course I was lying. The "tiny" bit part, anyway. — Melina Marchetta

He watched her for several minutes. Something was stirred in him, something not accounted for by the warm smell of the afternoon or the triumphant vividness of red. He felt persistently that the girl was beautiful - then of a sudden he understood: it was her distance, not a rare and precious distance of soul but still distance, if only in terrestrial yards. The autumn air was between them, and the roofs and the blurred voices. Yet for a not altogether explained second, posing perversely in time, his emotion had been nearer to adoration than in the deepest kiss he had ever known. — F Scott Fitzgerald

It was one of those rare and beautiful days in winter when England remembers that there is a sun. The star of the day, pale but nevertheless still splendid, was setting in the horizon, glorifying at one the heavens and the sea with bands of fire, and casting upon the tower and the old houses of the city a last ray of gold which made the windows sparkle like the reflection of a conflagration. — Alexandre Dumas

Mr. Pilates was a bully and a narcissist and a dirty old man; he and Christopher got along very well. When Christopher was doing his workout, Pilates would bring one of his assistants over to watch, rather as the house surgeon brings an intern to study a patient with a rare deformity. 'Look at him!' Pilates would exclaim to the assistant, 'That could have been a beautiful body, and look what he's done to it! Like a birdcage that somebody trod on!' Pilates had grown tubby with age, but he would never admit it; he still thought himself a magnificent figure of a man. 'That's not fat,' he declared, punching himself in the stomach, 'that's good healthy meat!' He frankly lusted after some of his girl students. He used to make them lie back on an inclined board and climb on top of them, on the pretext that he was showing them an exercise. What he really was doing was rubbing off against them through his clothes; as was obvious from the violent jerking of his buttocks. — Christopher Isherwood

But what made him still more fortunate, as he said himself, was having a daughter of such exceeding beauty, rare intelligence, gracefulness, and virtue, that everyone who knew her and beheld her marvelled at the extraordinary gifts with which heaven and nature had endowed her. As a child she was beautiful, she continued to grow in beauty, and at the age of sixteen she was most lovely. The fame of her beauty began to spread abroad through all the villages around - but why do I say the villages around, merely, when it spread to distant cities, and even made its way into the halls of royalty and reached the ears of people of every class, who came from all sides to see her as if to see something rare and curious, or some wonder-working image? — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Her smile didn't mean her suffering was over, but when it appeared it was something beautiful to see; a rare flower. — Melissa C. Water

You have rare beauty the like I have never seen but you will be more beautiful heavy with my seed, he stated softly. — Kristen Ashley

Now, in Mr. Thornton's face the straight brows fell over the clear deep-set earnest eyes, which, without being unpleasantly sharp, seemed intent enough to penetrate into the very heart and core of what he was looking at. The lines in the face were few but firm, as if they were carved in marble, and lay principally about the lips, which were slightly compressed over a set of teeth so faultless and beautiful as to give the effect of sudden sunlight when the rare bright smile, coming in an instant and shining out of the eyes, changed the whole look from the severe and resolved expression of a man ready to do and dare everything, to the keen honest enjoyment of the moment, which is seldom shown so fearlessly and instantaneously except by children — Elizabeth Gaskell

I felt the loss of my voice like a fresh wound, a cold blade against my throat, and I closed my eyes to keep the sea from spilling down my cheeks. No one knew me like my family in Tobago, but they'd known me always as Elyse, beautiful songbird, weaver of music that could bring a man to his knees. Music was my life, a rare gift that Natalie and I had shared, had grown into, had grown because of.
And now, without the music, I was just . . . Elyse. Broken.
My family didn't know me anymore. Natalie didn't know me. I didn't know me. — Sarah Ockler

"You couldn't be more wrong", I said. "You are buying into the cross-stitched sentiments of your parents' throw pillows. You're arguing that the fragile, rare thing is beautiful simply because it is fragile and rare. But that's a lie, and you know it." "You're a hard person to comfort" , Augustus said. "Easy comfort isn't comforting", I said. "You were a rare and fragile flower once. You remember." For a moment he said nothing. "You do know how to shut me up, Hazel Grace." "It's my privilege and responsibility," I answered. — John Green

Sentiments of your parents' throw pillows. You're arguing that the fragile, rare thing is beautiful simply because it is fragile and rare. But that's a lie, and you know it." "You're a hard person to comfort," Augustus said. "Easy comfort isn't comforting," I said. "You were a rare and fragile flower once. You remember." For a moment, he said nothing. "You do know how to shut me up, Hazel Grace." "It's my privilege and my responsibility," I answered. — John Green

It's strange. There's your life. You begin it, feeling that it's something so precious and rare, so beautiful that it's like a sacred treasure. Now it's over, and it doesn't make any difference to anyone, and it isn't that they are indifferent, it's just that they don't know, they don't know what it means, that treasure of mine, and there's something about it that they should understand. I don't understand it myself, but there's something that should be understood by all of us. Only what is it? What? — Ayn Rand

One of the purest souls ever to live on this fallen planet was Nicholas Herman, known as Brother Lawrence. He wrote very little, but what he wrote has seemed to several generations of Christians to be so rare and so beautiful as to deserve a place near the top among the world's great books of devotion. The writings of Brother Lawrence are the ultimate in simplicity; ideas woven like costly threads to make a pattern of great beauty. — A.W. Tozer

Varvara was a girl of some twenty-three summers, of middle height, thin, but possessing a face which, without being actually beautiful, had the rare quality of charm, and might fascinate even to the extent of passionate regard. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It was beautiful and rare, and you have every right to despise me."
She stood pressed to the wall, not moving.
"When you came in, I thought 'Send her away.' But I knew that if you went away, I'd run after you. I thought 'I won't say a word.' But I knew that you'd know it before you left. I love you. I know you'd think kindlier of me if I said that I hate you. — Ayn Rand

i didn't plan on falling in love with you, and i doubt you planned on falling in love with me. But once we met, it was clear that neither of us could control what was happening to us. we fell in love, despite our differences, and once we did, something rare and beautiful was created. — Nicholas Sparks

I have been in love already, but I don't think I have ever really loved somebody. Love is a very rare and beautiful thing, but it can also be bitter if the other one doesn't love you back. — Tom Kaulitz

The crops, however, I examine closely, to see what each bird has been feeding upon. Clover. Kinnickkinnick. Snowberries. Wheat. Barley. Crickets. Grasshoppers. Fir needles. Huckleberries. Rose hips. The crops filled with snowberries are breathtaking, looking like a clump of pearls, and nearly as rare; it's always a thrill to open a crop and see nothing but beautiful white berries. Usually in these woods, though, in the autumn, the crops are bulging with bright red kinnickkinnick berries, and the bright green leaves from the same bush. Tom and Nancy save the crop from each bird they kill and set it on the windowsill to dry translucent in the sunlight - a globe, a ball, filled with Christmas colors, perfect red and green; and then in December they hang these as ornaments on their tree. For — Rick Bass

He felt persistently that the girl was beautiful- then of a sudden he understood: it was her distance, not a rare and precious distance of soul but still distance, if only in terrestrial yards. — F Scott Fitzgerald

The joy of style lies not in how we look to other people, but in how we look to ourselves - and the most memorable and beautiful outfits are simply those that, in some rare moment of joy, we found the courage to share with the world. — Simon Van Booy

The scenery beneath, first just isolated tableaux visible through rare openings in the cloud cover, was rugged and beautiful with its green islands and blue sea, its steep rock faces and snowy white plains, but gradually it was erased or toned down, as the clouds vanished, until the flat Rogaland terrain was all you could see. — Karl Ove Knausgard

Romantic love is a beautiful thing under the right circumstances. But those circumstances are so specific and rare, aren't they?

It's rare that you love the person who loves you, that you love only the person who loves only you. Otherwise, somebody's heartbroken. — Taylor Jenkins Reid