Society Beauty Quotes & Sayings

The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they became with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier to see something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

The mass depiction of the modern woman as a "beauty" is a contradiction: Where modern women are growing, moving, and expressing their individuality, as the myth has it, "beauty" is by definition inert, timeless, and generic. That this hallucination is necessary and deliberate is evident in the way "beauty" so directly contradicts women's real situation. — Naomi Wolf

Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, is a monster for which the corruption of society forever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Since middle-class Western women can best be weakened psychologically now that we are stronger materially, the beauty myth, as it has resurfaced in the last generation, has had to draw on more technological sophistication and reactionary fervor than ever before. The modern arsenal of the myth is a dissemination of millions of images of the current ideal; although this barrage is generally seen as a collective sexual fantasy, there is in fact little that is sexual about it. It is summoned out of political fear on the part of male-dominated institutions threatened by women's freedom, and it exploits female guilt and apprehension about our own liberation
latent fears that we might be going too far. — Naomi Wolf

I am glad we have not yet been able to reach the stars or inhabitable planets that dance about them. For they would in all probability be owned and divided by corporations and framed by industrial interests. Better they rest in distant tranquility, apart from our manufactured chaos.
Let generations to come that learn to embrace one another, with their scientists, artists and poets, be the ones that immerse in that abundance and future. For now it is best it remains out of humanity's childlike hands in that big jar, light years away, marked "cookies." There for that coming time when the only thing we need feed off of, is the endless discovery and beauty. — Tom Althouse

People don't need enormous cars; they need admiration and respect. They don't need a constant stream of new clothes; they need to feel that others consider them to be attractive, and they need excitement and variety and beauty. People don't need electronic entertainment; they need something interesting to occupy their minds and emotions. And so forth. Trying to fill real but nonmaterial needs-for identity, community, self-esteem, challenge, love, joy-with material things is to set up an unquenchable appetite for false solutions to never-satisfied longings. A society that allows itself to admit and articulate its nonmaterial human needs, and to find nonmaterial ways to satisfy them, world require much lower material and energy throughputs and would provide much higher levels of human fulfillment. — Donella H. Meadows

It would be hard to point out any error more truly subversive of all the order and beauty, all the peace and happiness, of human society than the position that the body of men have a right to make what laws they please; or that laws can derive any authority from their institution merely and independent of the quality of the subject-matter. No arguments of policy, reason of state, or preservation of the constitution can be pleaded in favor of such a practice. They may in deed impeach the frame of that constitution; but can never touch this immovable principle. This seems to be, indeed, the principle which Hobbes broached in the last century, and which was then so frequently and so ably refuted. — Edmund Burke

Leave this touching and clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him, I want, but not news nor pottage. I can get politics, and chat, and neighborly conveniences from cheaper companions. Should not the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal, and great as nature itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that clump of waving grass that divides the brook? Let us not vilify, bur raise it to that standard. That great, defying eye, that scornful beauty of his mien and action, do not pique yourself on reducing, but rather fortify and enhance. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A fit queen for that nest of roses was the human flower that adorned it, for a year of love and luxury had ripened her youthful beauty into a perfect bloom. Graceful by nature, art had little to do for her, and, with a woman's aptitude, she had acquired the polish which society alone can give. Frank and artless as ever, yet less free in speech, less demonstrative in act; full of power and passion, yet still half unconscious of her gifts; beautiful with the beauty that wins the heart as well as satisfies the eye, yet unmarred by vanity or affectation. She now showed fair promise of becoming all that a deep and tender heart, an ardent soul and a gracious nature could make her, once life had tamed and taught her more. — Louisa May Alcott

Beauty discrimination has become necessary, not from the perception that women will not be good enough, but that they will be, as they have been, twice as good. — Naomi Wolf

All of them are the same type; girls with overprocessed hair and too much makeup and way too much access to Daddy's credit cards. Girls who, if you took away the designer labels, hair dye and cover-up, wouldn't be more than average-looking, but with all that stuff look too plastic to be pretty. — Hannah Harrington

Most evangelicals also acknowledge that in the Scriptures God stands revealed plainly as the author of nature, as the sustainer of human institutions (family, work, and government), and as the source of harmony, creativity, and beauty. Yet it has been precisely these Bible-believers par excellence who have neglected sober analysis of nature, human society, and the arts. The — Mark A. Noll

Our society gives its economy priority over health, love, truth, beauty, sex and salvation; over life itself. Whatsoever is given precedence over life will take precedence over life, and will end in eliminating life. Since economics, at its most abstract level, is the religion of our people, no noneconomic happening, not even one as potentially spectacular as the Second Coming, can radically alter the souls of our people. — Tom Robbins

The extremists had declared jihad against anyone and anything that challenged their vision of a pure Islamic society, and these artifacts - treatises about logic, astrology, and medicine, paeans to music, poems idealizing romantic love - represented five hundred years of human joy. They celebrated the sensual and the secular, and they bore the explicit message that humanity, as well as God, was capable of creating beauty. They were monumentally subversive. — Joshua Hammer

[Kafka] transformed the profoundly antipoetic material of a highly bureaucratized society into the great poetry of the novel; he transformed a very ordinary story of a man who cannot obtain a promised job ... into myth, into epic, into a kind of beauty never before seen. — Milan Kundera

In drawing attention to the physical characteristics of women leaders, they can be dismissed as either too pretty or too ugly. The net effect is to prevent women's identification with the issues. If the public women is stigmatized as too 'pretty,' she's a threat, a rival
or simply not serious; if derided as too 'ugly,' one risks tarring oneself with the same brush by identifying oneself with her agenda. — Naomi Wolf

A society that could heal the dismembered world would recognize the inherent value of each person and of the plant, animal and elemental life that makes up the earth's living body; it would offer real protection, encourage free expression, and reestablish an ecological balance to be biologically and economically sustainable. Its underlying metaphor would be mystery, the sense of wonder at all that is beyond us and around us, at the forces that sustain our lives and the intricate complexity and beauty of their dance. — Starhawk

But the great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes. It was from facing this vast hardness that the boy's mouth had become so bitter; because he felt that men were too weak to make any mark here, that the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness. — Willa Cather

It has been our experience that women usually prefer thin, undernourished, flatchested females, dressed to the teeth, as a concept of "feminine beauty"
and that men prefer exactly the opposite: voluptuous, well-rounded and undressed. The women's idealization of woman is actually a male counterpart, competing with man in society; man's view of women is far more truly feminine. — Hugh Hefner

As a result of things that may have happened in their past, women seem to find it hard to trust anybody. They are so worried that people will somehow dislike them if they have the courage to be themselves. They are convinced by society's idea that you have to be thin to be beautiful. But you know what, my sister? You're beautiful just as you are! — Corallie Buchanan

A useful education served women best, More thought. To 'learn how to grow old gracefully is perhaps one of the rarest and most valuable arts which can be taught to a woman.' Yet, when beauty is all that is expected or desired in a woman, she is left with nothing in its absence. It 'is a most severe trail for those women to be called to lay down beauty, who have nothing else to take up. It is for this sober season of life that education should lay up its rich resources,' she argued. — Karen Swallow Prior

I think the idea of the social construction of beauty - this idea that beauty is simply whatever culture or society says it is - is on the run. Of course, beauty does arise in a cultural context. No one ever denies that. But there's also a natural response people have to it. — Denis Dutton

Hey,Gary," Savannah said, "do you want to go on a vampire hunt?"
Greogri swung around to pin her with his brilliant silver gaze. Do not even start. He used the beauty of his voice like the weapon it was, compelling and mesmerizing.
Savannah blinked, then smiled sweetly up at him. "Really,Gary. I saw it one of those tour brochures. Isn't that the perfect place to look for those society types? They must hang out around those kinds of things?"
"A vampire hunt?" gary echoed incredulously. "For real?"
"I have the brochure at home." She studiously avoided Gregori's furious gaze.
She wore the little secret smile again, the one that always drove Gregori crazy, turned him inside out, and melted his heart. She was up to no good. He had no doubt of it. It has occurred to me that you need a good spanking.
Her smile grew smug. I said I was willing to try anything once, lifemate, but i think it best if we wait until we are alone,don't you? — Christine Feehan

By taking systematic actions and by focusing on beauty, for sure we can change our society. — Debasish Mridha

People who hate what I make hate me, too. They must think I am a demon or some kind of evil sorcerer. Those who understand what I do appreciate the determination, love, and courage it takes to find wonder and beauty in people who are considered by society to be damaged, unclean, dysfunctional, or wretched. — Joel-Peter Witkin

[A Letter to the Culture that Raised Me] I'm not here to be on display. And my body is not for public consumption. I will not be reduced to an object, or a pair of legs to sell shoes. I'm a soul, a mind, a servant of God. My worth is defined by the beauty of my soul, my heart, my moral character. So I won't worship your beauty standards, and I don't submit to your fashion sense. My submission is to something higher. — Yasmin Mogahed

My art gives contemporary art a juvenile-delinquent phase. Its self-made style gleefully trashes conventions of beauty and society while pick-pocketing from the coolest underground styles and beliefs of the previous centuries. — Steve Olson

To die is to love. The beauty of love is not in past remembrances or in the images of tomorrow. Love has no past and no future; what has, is memory, which is not love. Love with its passion is just beyond the range of society, which is you. Die, and it is there. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

What if all the forces of society were bent upon developing [poor] children? What if society's business were making people insteadof profits? How much of their creative beauty of spirit would remain unquenched through the years? How much of this responsiveness would follow them through life? — Mary Heaton Vorse

No matter what a woman's appearance may be, it will be used to undermine what she is saying and taken to individualize - as her personal problem - observations she makes about the beauty myth in society. — Naomi Wolf

My dears, laugh at me if you like; it is not conventionally beautiful, but there is something in its quaint old face which pleases me. If it could play the piano, I am sure it would really play. — Marcel Proust

I try to write characters that are normal, believable people with a unique sense of humor. I like characters that aren't necessarily society's idea of "perfect". I wanted to make characters that were more real. I want my potential readers to see that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. I want them, especially the girls, to realize that whatever you look like, whether you're chubby or skinny, dark haired or blonde, popular or the school outcast, that everyone deserves to be loved. And that if you look hard enough, there's someone out there waiting just for you. — Taylor Fenner

A little dust does not make an ocean dirty. By blaming you change the society by making a lot of dust. By taking systematic actions and by focusing on beauty- for sure we can change our society and clean up the dust. — Debasish Mridha

For beauty there must be austerity and a total abandonment, and there cannot be abandonment if there is any sense of ambition expressing itself as an achievement. When there is austerity, there is simplicity, and only the mind that is simple can abandon itself, and out of this abandonment comes love. Such a state is beauty. But of that we are totally unaware. Our civilization, our culture, is based on arrogance, on the sense of achievement, and in society we are at each other's throats, violently competing to achieve, to acquire, to dominate, to become somebody. These are obvious psychological facts. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I wonder if it changes the nature of a society for beauty to be so common. Maybe in Vietnam "She has a wonderful personality" really means something. But I couldnt figure out a polite way to ask. — P. J. O'Rourke

Does the plain, simple beauty of life get buried under society's so-called required daily activities or is that just true of me? No, I know I'm not alone in that feeling. We all get caught up in the making and spending of money. I know it's not just me. — Dan Groat

Be sure that if you are unhappily celebrated for either beauty, wit, intellect, or all three together, half society wishes you dead already, and the other half tries to make you as wretched as possible while you are alive. — Marie Corelli

I have long been aggravated, and it increases, about the way that society values women almost exclusively for their beauty and youth, and when we get older, tries to make us powerless - just when we're at our most knowledgeable, and most capable. It's so rotten. I gnash my teeth. — Maria Dahvana Headley

[The Edwardian era] was a time of booming trade, of great prosperity and wealth in which the pageant of London Society took place year after year in a setting of traditional dignity and beauty. The great houses - Devonshire, Dorchester, Grosvenor, Stafford and Lansdowne House - had not yet been converted into museums, hotels and flats, and there we danced through the long summer nights till dawn. The great country-houses still flourished in their glory, and on their lawns in the green shade of trees the art of human intercourse was exquisitely practised by men and women not yet enslaved by household cares and chores who still had time to read, to talk, to listen and to think. — Violet Bonham Carter

All women are beautiful; it's society who's ugly. — Ben Mitchell

The girl with a moustache" they called me every now and then
"It's about time you wax your arms" those who "cared" said
I faced the fears of the dreaded thread on my face
To succumb every other week to the world's ways — Sanhita Baruah

We have a sickness in our society. If you say that somebody is a 'success', isn't it that usually what you mean is that they've made a lot of money, or have a lot of money? ... Whrereas I would define a successful human being - - if you think twice about it, and question that assumption, you know, wouldn't that actually be somebody who brings out the best in other people? Someone who gives - - adds beauty to the lives of others, in some way? John Robbins - author of 'The Good Life — John Robbins

What we love is too much in the past, consists too much in the time that we have spent together for us to require the whole woman; we wish only to be sure that it is she, not to be mistaken as to her identity, a thing far more important than beauty to those who are in love; her cheeks may grow hollow, her body thin, even to those who were originally most proud, in the eyes of the world, of their domination over beauty, that little tip of a nose, that sign in which is summed up the permanent personality of a woman, that algebraical formula, that constant, is sufficient to prevent a man who is courted in the highest society and is in love with her from being free upon a single evening because he is spending his evenings in brushing and entangling, until it is time to go to bed, the hair of the woman whom he loves, or simply in staying by her side, so that he may be with her or she with him, or merely that she may not be with other people. — Marcel Proust

It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.
It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal. — Pope John Paul II

The beauty of HTML was that one-way linking made it very simple to spread because you could put something up and take no responsibility whatsoever. And that creates a society in which people display no responsibility whatsoever. That's the problem. — Jaron Lanier

Our confused society badly needs a community of contrast, a counterculture of ordinary pilgrims who insist living a different way. Unlike popular culture, we will lavish attention on the least "deserving" in direct opposition to our celebrity culture's emphasis on success, wealth, and beauty. — Philip Yancey

It's all society is, the repressed sex drives of men, the objectification of women, their paranoia, the posturing, the macho stances, the beauty standard, it's all just one charade masking a never ending hard on. — Trevor D. Richardson

Stupid patriarchal culture with stupid ideas of beauty - stupid me for going along with it. — Marni Bates

While the opportunity to improve yourself and your situation is a great thing, our striving to build perfect lives seems to have morphed into perfectionism so focused on itself that we forget about others in the world. We work so hard to build the ultimate luxury sedan, to embody society's standard of beauty, and to achieve historical scientific breakthroughs that we conveniently forget our family members in other parts of the world who must walk miles each day in their only set of clothing for the opportunity to go to school. — Holly Sprink

The old family carriage and the two lady's maids were there,
as necessaries of life; but London society was not within her reach. It was therefore the case that they had not heard very much about Lizzie Eustace. But they had heard something. "I hope she won't be too fond of going out," said Amelia, the second girl.
"Or extravagant," said Georgina, the third.
"There was some story of her being terribly in debt when she married Sir Florian Eustace," said Diana, the fourth.
"Frederic will be sure to see to that," said Augusta, the eldest.
"She is very beautiful," said Lydia, the fifth.
"And clever," said Cecilia, the sixth.
"Beauty and cleverness won't make a good wife," said Amelia, who was the wise one of the family.
"Frederic will be sure to see that she doesn't go wrong," said Augusta who was not wise. — Anthony Trollope

As Muslim women, we have been liberated from this silent bondage. We don't need society's standard of beauty or fashion, to define our worth. We don't need to become just like men to be honored, and we don't need to wait for a prince to save or complete us. Our worth, our honor, our salvation, and our completion lie not in the slave. But, in the Lord of the slave. — Yasmin Mogahed

The novel should tell the truth, as I see the truth, or as the novelist persuades me to see it. And one more demand: I expect the novelist to aspire to improve the world ... As a novelist, I want to be more than one more dog barking at the other dogs barking at me. Not out of any foolish hope that one novelist, or all virtuous novelists in chorus, can make much of a difference for good, except in the long run, but out of the need to prevent the human world from relaxing into something worse. To maintain the tension between truth and falsity, beauty and ugliness, good and evil ... I believe the highest duty of the serious novelist is, whatever the means or technique, to be a critic of his society, to hold society to its own ideals, or if these ideals are unworthy, to suggest better ideals. — Edward Abbey

Dada demonstrated that a society that had lost respect was no longer in a position to demand that the artist adhere to its aesthetic and ideological values. The bourgeois idea of beauty had become ridiculous. Poetry was now abstract and based on sound. Rather than focusing on representation, painters now worked with their material for its own sake in terms of its colour, form and structure. The element of chance was treated as a creative process, that freed the artist from the alienation of conditioning. — Marc Dachy

What compels me to fight this society is, of course, outrage over injustice, a love of freedom, and a feeling of responsibility for perpetuating and enlarging the human spirit - its beauty, creativity, and latent capacity to improve the world. I do not care to come to terms with an irrational society that corrodes all that is valuable in humanity, that eats away at all that is beautiful and noble in the human experience. — Murray Bookchin

What really does work to increase the feeling of having a home and its comforts is housekeeping. Housekeeping creates cleanliness, order, regularity, beauty, the conditions for health and safety, and a good place to do and feel all the things you wish and need to do and feel in your home. Whether you live alone or with a spouse, parents, and ten children, it is your housekeeping that makes your home alive, that turns it into a small society in its own right, a vital place with its own ways and rhythms, the place where you can be more yourself than you can be anywhere else. — Cheryl Mendelson

The beauty of being black in American society is that black has always been an inclusive definition. White has always been an exclusive definition. I think one of the challenges for white people is to figure out how to have a more inclusive picture of who their families are, of who they are. — Benjamin Jealous

To be human is, primarily, to embrace that we are human with strengths and weaknesses, and that our humanity is preordained to seek the Truth, Good and Beauty as part of our humanity. To be human is to be an agent of peace, justice, and reconciliation in our community or society. To be human is to be heroic and generous in an unobtrusive way, free from any selfish motive, with no media to show the litany of our good deeds. To be human is to have time to listen to the story of a grieving soul, to give hope to the hopeless, to give love to the unloved.(Danny Castillones Sillada, A reason to be Human: Human Pathos and Compassion) — Danny Castillones Sillada

[Women's magazines]ignore older women or pretend that they don't exist; magazines try to avoid photographs of older women, and when they feature celebrities who are over sixty, 'retouching artists' conspire to 'help' beautiful women look more beautiful, ie less than their age...By now readers have no idea what a real woman's 60 year old face looks like in print because it's made to look 45. Worse, 60 year old readers look in the mirror and think they are too old, because they're comparing themselves to some retouched face smiling back at them from a magazine. — Dalma Heyn

To be poor, ugly and, moreover, intelligent condemns one in our society to a dark and disillusioned life ... to beauty all is forgiven. — Muriel Barbery

Woman is a delicate creature with strong emotions who has been created by the Almighty God to shoulder responsibility for educating society and moving toward perfection. God created woman as symbol of His own beauty and to give solace to her partner and her family. — Hazrat Ali Ibn Abu-Talib A.S

I see what's going on," I said. "You're confusing beauty with this society's current idea of perfection of visual form. — A.M. Jenkins

The garden is one of the two great metaphors for humanity.
The garden is about life and beauty and the impermanence of all living things.
The garden is about feeding your children, providing food for the tribe.
It's part of an urgent territorial drive that we can probably trace back to animals storing food.
It's a competitive display mechanism, like having a prize bull, this greed for the best tomatoes and English tea roses.
It's about winning; about providing society with superior things; and about proving that you have taste, and good values, and you work hard.
And what a wonderful relief, every so often, to know who the enemy is.
Because in the garden, the enemy is everything: the aphids, the weather, time.
And so you pour yourself into it, care so much, and see up close so much birth, and growth, and beauty, and danger, and triumph.
And then everything dies anyway, right?
But you just keep doing it. — Anne Lamott

The terrible error in the course of human civilization is undoubtedly the defective judgment that allowed religious authorities usurp the foundation of societal morality, in which all collective ethics of humankind must take a cause. This appalling blunder is comparable only to assigning the leper exclusive franchise to run beauty clinics in the society; this can only lead to cycles upon cycles of common infection syndrome. — Adebowale Ojowuro

Languor is underrated. It is not possible to be immobile in modern society except by dint of constant effort. Holding on tightly to the riverbank and fighting the current is not languor. Nobody likes that. But bone-lazy idleness hours and hours spent staring at the sky and remembering books and birthdays and great kisses: this is a pure pleasure that eludes the productive in all their confident superiority. Languor s sunny and hot. It is at home near the sea and is best appreciated in environments of beauty and limited promise. It contains within it the idea of boredom but is also colored by idle fancy and the understanding that some things proceed best with limited attention. — Kevin Patterson

Beauty without wit offers love nothing but the material enjoyment of its physical charms, whilst witty ugliness captivates by the charms of the mind, and at last fulfills all the desires of the man it has captivated ...
Let anyone ask a beautiful woman without wit whether she would be willing to exchange a small portion of her beauty for a sufficient dose of wit. If she speaks the truth, she will say, "No, I am satisfied to be as I am." But why is she satisfied? Because she is not aware of her own deficiency. Let an ugly but witty woman be asked if she would change her wit against beauty, and she will not hesitate in saying no. Why? Because, knowing the value of her wit, she is well aware that it is sufficient by itself to make her a queen in any society. — Giacomo Casanova

Healthy emotions come in all sizes. Healthy minds come in all sizes. And healthy bodies come in all sizes. — Cheri K. Erdman

Finally, this is one way to reconcile the delight in beauty with the bourgeois life. Aschenbach, on one reading, has spent virtually all of his adult life balancing his restrained homosexuality, which is bound together with his sensitivity to beauty and thus with his artistic vocation, against the demands of conventional society. — Philip Kitcher

Religion is a belief with a set of rules, regulations, and rituals created by someone with his thoughts, imaginations, experiences, and wisdom. Most religions bring about positive changes for society. Spirituality is a perception of inner truth, inner beauty, and inner reality. Spirituality involves trusting your own experiences. — Debasish Mridha

Br>
'Yes, OK, but so what if I was!' Interrupted Jane. 'What if I was! That's my point. What if I was a bit overweight and not especially pretty? Why is that so terrible? So disgusting? Why is that the end of the world?'
Madeline found herself without words. To be fat and ugly actually would be the end of the world for her.
'It's because A woman's entire self-worth rests on her looks,' said Jane. 'That's why. it's because we live in a beauty-obsessed society where the most important thing a women can do is make herself attractive to men.
. — Liane Moriarty

You define beauty for yourself, society doesn't define your beauty. Your spirit and your faith defines your beauty. — Lady Gaga

Has there ever been a more important subject, in all the world, than children and families? These are, after all, the foundation and ultimate purpose of any society. Moreover, the overall purpose of this experience is not merely survival or just the day after day (after day) exercise of going through the motions of meeting basic needs. Rather, it was meant to be a long, deep immersion of a work in progress, a life-long celebration of sorts, steeped in love, beauty, and joy. Anything less is a travesty and is tragically off the mark of true success for the parent and the child, and amiss of the essentials for a fullness of life for both. — Connie Kerbs

For some strange reason we don't go to charming, light movies anymore. People expect a movie to be heavy and turgid, like "American Beauty." We've become a heavy-handed society. — Pauline Kael

One problem that I kept in mind was that in avoiding the BODY BEAUTIFUL as exhibited in the pseudo-lesbians of David Hamilton or J. Frederick Smith, I ran the risk of reinforcing negative myths, i.e. that lesbians are women who cannot attract men because they do not conform to society's standard of beauty. — Tee Corinne

A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is exhibiting the fine qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace. — Alfred North Whitehead

Natural beauty has a necessary place in the spiritual development of any individual or any society. — Rachel Carson

I'm not society's version of beautiful
But you're mine. — R.J. Seeley

A man abandoned by himself on a desert island would adorn neither his hut nor his person; nor would he seek for flowers, still less would he plant them, in order to adorn himself therewith. It is only in society that it occurs to him to be not merely a man, but a refined man after his kind (the beginning of civilization). For such do we judge him to be who is both inclined and apt to communicate his pleasure to others, and who is not contented with an object if he cannot feel satisfaction in it in common with others. Again, every one expects and requires from every one else this reference to universal communication of pleasure, as it were from an original compact dictated by humanity itself. — Immanuel Kant

In a society that worships love, freedom and beauty, dance is sacred,It is a paryer for the future, a remembrance of the past and a joyful exclamation of thanks for the present. — Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Women have face-lifts in a society in which women without them appear to vanish from sight. — Naomi Wolf

It's because a woman's entire self-worth rests on her looks,' said Jane. 'That's why. It's because we live in a beauty-obsessed society where the most important thing a woman can do is make herself attractive to men.' Madeline — Liane Moriarty

The social [media channel] isn't about beauty contests and popularity contests. They're a distortion, a caricature of the real thing. It's about trust, connection, and community. That's what there's too little of in today's mediascape, despite all the hoopla surrounding social tools. The promise of the Internet wasn't merely to inflate relationships, without adding depth, resonance, and meaning. It was to fundamentally rewire people, communities, civil society, business, and the state - through thicker, stronger, more meaningful relationships. That's where the future of media lies. — Umair Haque

Every woman knows that, regardless of all her other achievements, she is a failure if she is not beautiful. — Germaine Greer

It has since struck me as one of the most touching aspects of the part played in life by these idle, painstaking women that they devote all their generosity, all their talent, their transferable dreams of sentimental beauty (for, like all artists, they never seek to realise the value of those dreams, or to enclose them in the four-square frame of everyday life), and their gold, which counts for little, to the fashioning of a fine and precious setting for the rubbed and scratched and ill-polished lives of men. — Marcel Proust

While almost all men feel an attraction drawing them to society, few are attracted strongly to Nature. In their reaction to Naturemen appear to me for the most part, notwithstanding their arts, lower than the animals. It is not often a beautiful relation, as in the case of the animals. How little appreciation of the beauty of the landscape there is among us! We have to be told that the Greeks called the world Kosmos, Beauty, or Order, but we do not see clearly why they did so, and we esteem it at best only a curious philological fact. — Henry David Thoreau

It's my choice to be beautiful. It's my choice to be ugly. And it's my choice to decided what those words actually mean. — Virginia Petrucci

The beauty of a society is not just in the laws upon which the society revolves, but how the society regards, upholds and obeys the laws which set boundaries for a beautiful and a harmonious society! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

What I'm saying is simply that every totalitarian society, no matter how strict, has had its underground. In fact, two undergrounds. There's the underground involved in political resistance and the underground involved in preserving beauty and fun
which is to say, preserving the human spirit. — Tom Robbins

Deep inside each human being is a spirit that hungers for movement and for growth. A live and burgeoning ball of energy, the spirit naturally moves, expands, gyrates - dances, even - purely by virtue of its desire for freedom. It craves beauty over entertainment, meaning over triviality, and knowledge over sensation. American society devotes few harbors to the trade of truth. Too often we sacrifice the pursuit of knowledge, distracted instead by sparkling material things. — Joe De Sena

I am somewhere in the middle of a village with all the modern amenities. There's something missing. Life? I reckon.... — Manasa Rao

Beauty' is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the West is is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact. — Naomi Wolf

Courtesy, like grace and beauty, that which begets liking and inclination to love one another at the first sight, and in the very beginning of our acquaintance and familiarity; and, consequently, that which first opens the door for us to better ourselves by the example of others, if there be anything in the society worth notice — Michel De Montaigne

Gardening is a luxury occupation: an ornament, not a necessity, of life ... Fortunate gardener, who may preoccupy himself solely with beauty in these difficult and ugly days! He is one of the few people left in this distressful world to carry on the tradition of elegance and charm. A useless member of society, considered in terms of economics, he must not be denied his rightful place. He deserves to share it, however humbly, with the painter and poet. — Vita Sackville-West

Consumer culture is best supported by markets made up of sexual clones, men who want objects and women who want to be objects, and the object desired ever-changing, disposable, and dictated by the market. The beautiful object of consumer pornography has a built-in obsolescence, to ensure that as few men as possible will form a bond with one woman for years or for a lifetime, and to ensure that women's dissatisfaction with themselves will grow rather than diminish over time. Emotionally unstable relationships, high divorce rates, and a large population cast out into the sexual marketplace are good for business in a consumer economy. Beauty pornography is intent on making modern sex brutal and boring and only as deep as a mirror's mercury, anti-erotic for both men and women. — Naomi Wolf

The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us ... During the past decade, women breached the power structure; meanwhile, eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery became the fastest-growing specialty ... pornography became the main media category, ahead of legitimate films and records combined, and thirty-three thousand American women told researchers that they would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal ... More women have more money and power and scope and legal recognition than we have ever had before; but in terms of how we feel about ourselves physically, we may actually be worse off than our unliberated grandmothers. — Naomi Wolf

Here is a fundamental conflict in educated society: We are not supposed to value beauty so highly, and yet who can defend against its sheer power to move, its rhetorical force? — Russell Smith

How good it is to work in the invigorating fresh air under the life-giving sun amid the inspiring beauty of nature. There are many who recognize this ... How good it is to earn you livelihood by contributing constructively to the society in which you live - everyone should, of course, and in a healthy society everyone would. — Peace Pilgrim

If there is any one person you can't love, then you don't understand love. The bitter cup we have to drink is the dregs of humility; we must see past the outer shells of insecurity to the seed of divinity deep inside each one of us.
No one virtue is strong enough to stand on its own. No one vice is simple enough not to lead to all others. No one person can appreciate and support us as much as we need. No one event is enough to tear apart our lives.
What does this all mean?
We have to give everything or we will have nothing. We cannot take any short cuts. We have to love everyone, or we cannot truly love anyone. No excuse will mean anything to us in the end.
People are beautiful, don't forget that.
Don't let pomp and circumstance, society or folklore fool you with counterfeit beauty.
True beauty is usually not something you can see, but something you feel; something that inspires you. — Michael Brent Jones

I believe natural beauty has a necessary place in the spiritual development of any individual or any society. I believe that whenever we substitute something man-made and artificial for a natural feature of the earth, we have retarded some part of man's spiritual growth. — Rachel Carson

I suppose the artists invented the firm breasts they put on women, and that in reality all women had flabby ones. — Jean Cocteau

Truth can conquer but only beauty can rule. — Raheel Farooq