Quotes & Sayings About Women's Beauty

And in the kisses, what deep sweetness! There are women's mouths that seem to ignite with love the breath that opens them. Whether they are reddened by blood richer than purple, or frozen by the pallor of agony, whether they are illuminated by the goodness of consent or darkened by the shadow of disdain, they always carry within them an enigma that disturbs men of intellect, and attracts them and captivates them. A constant discord between the expression of the lips and that of the eyes generates the mystery; it seems as if a duplicitous soul reveals itself there with a different beauty, happy and sad, cold and passionate, cruel and merciful, humble and proud, laughing and mocking; and the abiguity arouses discomfort in the spirit that takes pleasure in dark things. — Gabriele D'Annunzio

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

There is a thing about beauty. Beauty is always associated with the male fantasy of what the female body is. I don't think there is anything wrong with beauty. It's just what women think is beautiful can be different. And there can be a beauty in individualism. If there is a wart or a scar, this can be beautiful, in a sense, when you paint it. — Jenny Saville

They sensed somehow that she lived in the prenumbral shadows between two worlds, just beyond the grasp of their power. That a woman that they had already damned, now had little left to lose, and could therefore be dangerous. So on the days that the radio played Ammu's songs, people avoided her, making little loops around her, because everybody agreed that it was best to just Let Her Be. — Arundhati Roy

I don't love women. Love has to be reinvented, we know that. The only thing women can ultimately imagine is security. Once they get that, love, beauty, everything else goes out the window. All they have left is cold disdain; that's what marriages live on nowadays. Sometimes I see women who ought to be happy, with whom I could have found companionship, already swallowed up by brutes with as much feeling as an old log ... — Arthur Rimbaud

I know my comfort zone and I know what my strong points are and my first love was always music. I'm a huge cinema fan. I was taking my time; I got offered a lot of scripts and things along the way but until Burlesque showed up at my doorstep, it really spoke to me. I have a collection of burlesque books at home that I've had for years. I've always been intrigued and fascinated with the topic, the beauty and the art of it and the comedic value of it. I think it's just a beautiful, empowering thing for women. — Christina Aguilera

I think we all waste a lot of time measuring ourselves up against impossible standards in lots of ways. We need to learn a few things, one of which being that physical beauty comes in all shapes and sizes, including a lot that the women's magazines have never even thought of. — Kate Grenville

Stop the idea that a woman's beauty is for a man's gaze, that you have the right to touch her. This idea that she must smile and accept unwanted approaches even when she is clearly uncomfortable. Just because you call a woman beautiful does not mean you have the right to behave like her beauty belongs to you. There are women healing from scars gotten from men who have called them beautiful yet offered them pain. The beauty of a woman is hers and hers alone. There are triggers for some women, respect this and know this. The beauty of a woman is hers and hers alone — Ijeoma Umebinyuo

Global women's issues like forced female circumcision, sex clubs in Thailand, the veiling of women in Africa, India, the Middle East, and Europe, the killing of female children in China, remain important concerns. However feminist women in the West are still struggling to decolonize feminist thinking and practice so that these issues can be addressed in a manner that does not reinscribe Western imperialism ...
A decolonized feminist perspective would first and foremost examine how sexist practices in relation to women's bodies globally are linked. For example: linking circumcision with life-threatening eating disorders (which are the direct consequence of a culture imposing thinness as a beauty ideal) ... — Bell Hooks

But I am fearful of it because I hear she is learned in the Four Books, and learning has never accompanied beauty in women. — Pearl S. Buck

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

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

If you feel your value lies in being merely decorative, I fear that someday you might find yourself believing that's all that you really are. Time erodes all such beauty, but what it cannot diminish is the wonderful workings of your mind: Your humor, your kindness, and your moral courage. These are the things I cherish so in you. I so wish I could give my girls a more just world. But I know you'll make it a better place.
Marmee, Little Women — Louisa May Alcott

Women have no sense of the abstract-a woman admiring the sky is a woman caressing the sky. In a woman's mind beauty is something she needs to touch. — Jean Giraudoux

I'm glad they gave women the right to vote, but sometimes I'm sorry they have the right to smoke. Most women are messy about it, particularly about their lipstick. I don't mind wiping lipstick off myself, but I hate seeing it on cigarettes, napkins and coffee cups! I don't like women with all their beauty machinery showing-curlers, cold cream, mascara brushes. I'd even prefer to not see a woman touch up her lipstick, but I guess that's expecting too much. — Kirk Douglas

In Brazil, there isn't just one beauty ideal. There's a lot of emphasis on a woman's natural beauty - but of course, Brazilian women love expressing their beauty through makeup. — Adriana Lima

For she was really too lovely
too formidably lovely. I was used by now to mere unadjectived loveliness, the kind that youth and spirits hang like a rosy veil over commonplace features, an average outline and a pointless merriment. But this was something calculated, accomplished, finished
and just a little worn. It frightened me with my first glimpse of the infinity of beauty and the multiplicity of her pit-falls. What! There were women who need not fear crow's-feet, were more beautiful for being pale, could let a silver hair or two show among the dark, and their eyes brood inwardly while they smiled and chatted? but then no young man was safe for a moment! But then the world I had hitherto known had been only a warm pink nursery, while this new one was a place of darkness, perils and enchantments ... — Edith Wharton

When it came time to build a tabernacle, the Israelite women brought all their mirrors to Moses so he could use them to make God's building more beautiful. (Exodus 38:8.) They were far more interested in enjoying God's glory than reflecting on their own images. — Gwendolyn Diaz

There is no such thing as beauty, especially in the human face ... what we call the physiognomy. It's all a mathematical and imagined alignment of features. Like, if the nose doesn't stick out too much, the sides are in fashion, if the earlobes aren't too large, if the hair is long ... It's kind of a mirage of generalization. People think of certain faces as beautiful, but, truly, in the final measure, they are not. It's a mathematical equation of zero. "True beauty" comes, of course, of character. Not through how the eyebrows are shaped. So many women that I'm told are beautiful ... hell, it's like looking into a soup bowl. — Charles Bukowski

Desire acts as a honey trap to the unwary male, luring him into unworthy and catastrophic enterprises. The beauty of the Narnian witches isn't ancillary to their evil, but integral to it, one of the weapons in their arsenal. Evil must, after all, appear attractive if it's going to be tempting, and from there it's only a small step further to the conclusion that feminine beauty is inherently wicked. — Laura Miller

I admire women who can be feminists and fight for women's rights, who believe in our powers as individuals and yet not apologize for beauty. — Olivia Wilde

The power of a woman is in her beauty. Show it off every time you have the chance — Bangambiki Habyarimana

In 2014 a survey conducted by a nonprofit organization called Stop Street Harassment revealed that more than 60 percent of women in Buenos Aires had experienced intimidation from men who catcalled them.18 To a lot of men in Buenos Aires, women's concern came as a surprise. When asked about the survey, Buenos Aires's mayor, Mauricio Macri, dismissed it as inaccurate and proceeded to explain why women couldn't possibly have a problem with being shouted at by strangers. "All women like to be told compliments," he said. "Those who say they're offended are lying. Even though you'll say something rude, like 'What a cute ass you have' . . . it's all good. There is nothing more beautiful than the beauty of women, right? It's almost the reason that men breathe. — Aziz Ansari

Tis beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just IT. Some women will stay in a man's memory if they once walked down a street. — Rudyard Kipling

Where is any author in the world Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye? - Love's Labor Lost. The eyes appears to be more immediately connected with the soul than any other organ. A woman reflects every emotion, almost every thought from her two wonderful, priceless eyes, and no feature of her face is more a telltale of her nature. "Show me," says the old Chinese proverb, "a man's eyes, and I will tell you what he might have been. Show me his mouth, and I will tell you what he has been." The same is true of women. Up to thirty or thirty-five a woman may be actress enough to make her eyes tell one tale, while her life would reveal another; but little by little the true state of a woman's soul stands forth in the expression, the frankness, the furtiveness, the candor, or the boldness — Harriet Hubbard Ayer

I've always loved strong women, which is lucky for me because once you're over about twenty-five there is no other kind. Women blow my mind. The stuff that routinely gets done to them would make most men curl up and die, but women turn to steel and keep on coming. Any man who claims he's not into strong women is fooling himself mindless; he's into strong women who know how to pout prettily and put on baby voices, and who will end up keeping his balls in her makeup bags. — Tana French

But
" she tried not to wail, but her voice crept upward, anyway "
I want to go HOME
"
"And I want a palace and a handsome, young prince who has an unnatural lust for old women, and neither of us are going to get what we crave, so let's concentrate on what we can do something about!" Granny said sharply. — Mercedes Lackey

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 false argument has been used that only a man can represent a male Jesus. But this portrays an inadequate understanding of the incarnation. The Son of God, in assuming our humanity, became a man, not to sanctify maleness, but our common humanity so that, be we men or women, we can see the dignity and beauty of our humanity sanctified in him. — James B. Torrance

When asked about the survey, Buenos Aires's mayor, Mauricio Macri, dismissed it as inaccurate and proceeded to explain why women couldn't possibly have a problem with being shouted at by strangers. "All women like to be told compliments," he said. "Those who say they're offended are lying. Even though you'll say something rude, like 'What a cute ass you have'...it's all good. There is nothing more beautiful than the beauty of women, right? It's almost the reason that men breathe." To be clear, this is the mayor. Upon reading this quote, I investigated, and can confirm that at the time of this interview he was not wearing one of those helmets that holds beers and has straws that go into your mouth. — Aziz Ansari

Men have firm beautiful bodies with cut muscles. But the curves and gentleness of a woman's body is beyond a words measure; with their dazzling rawness it's impossible to perfect but I crave the need to depict such a fathomless beauty. — S.K. Logsdon

Light - both physical and moral - was a central concern to the men and women living in the medieval age. They attempted to explore its properties in the colors of a stained glass canopy, in the tenor of a brisk saltarello, in the lilt of a Jongleur's ballad, in the sweet savor of a banqueting table, in the rhapsody of a well planned garden, indeed, in every arena and discipline of life. — Douglas Wilson Douglas Jones

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

What was it with women and pushing men's buttons?
I get that a woman wants to look attractive. News flash: you already do. We see it. But apparently to women, owning their own beauty isn't enough. They arm all the weapons in their arsenal to gain the attention of every Y chromosome within a ten-mile radius. Why do they go to all the trouble? Validation.
Meanwhile, biology dictates survival of the fittest; battles ensue, wars are fought, and somewhere amid all the carnage, a victor emerges to claim his female. All because said female just wanted to go out and feel pretty that night. — Kat Bastion

Is there a relative value of beauty? Is evanescence - fleetingness - a necessary element of the thing that most moves us? A shooting star dazzles more than the sun. A child captivates like an elf, but grows into grossness, an ogre, a harpy. A flower splays itself into color - the lilies of the field! - more treasured than any painting of a flower. But of all these things, women's grace, shooting stars, flowers, and paintings, only a painting endures. — Gregory Maguire

For one of the first pressures that bear down on American girls is the pressure not only to be liked but to be like everyone else. This initial feat of self-transformation often involves loosening one's grip on that quiet sense of inner self and hitching one's wagon to a single standard of beauty. The stress of leaping through that hoop insinuates itself into the young heart and soul with a vengeance, and insecurities go from being hard little buds of confusion to overripe, snarled and tyrannical fruits that hang on the vine as we age. — Debra Ollivier

I feel truth, beauty, love, grief, anger, intimacy & alive in my body ... Women in the global south live in their bodies much more than we in the global north. Not as distracted by patriarchy's controlling images - They know power is in their bodies. I am deeply grateful for the women who showed me the way home. — Jodie Evans

The bicycle was proclaimed a boon to all mankind, a thing of beauty, good for the spirits, good for health and vitality, indeed one's whole outlook on life. Doctors enthusiastically approved. One Philadelphia physician, writing in The American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children, concluded from his observations that for physical exercise for both men and women, the bicycle is one of the greatest inventions of the nineteenth century. — David McCullough

Children see God every day; they just don't call it that. It's the summer sky painted with cumulus clouds by day and sequined with a million stars by night. It's the sweet whispers of sweet gum trees and the sounds riding the tops of honeysuckle-scented breezes. Children feel God stuffed into brown fluffy dogs with stitches strong enough to withstand a good squeeze, and on the lips of round women who can't get enough sugar from Chocolate.

I began to believe that God is us and nature, beauty and love, mystery and majesty, everything right and good. — Charles M. Blow

I believe it's time that women truly owned their superpowers and used their beauty and strength to change the world around them. — Janelle Monae

Breastfeeding is a beautiful thing, one of the most beautiful things that exist in nature. Think about how a woman can literally feed her baby with her body! In my eyes, this is a certain form of beauty, of divinity! To know that my body can not only form and bring another human being into the world, but that I can actually feed babies with my own milk from my own breasts - that puts me in a state of awe each time I think about it. It is an honour to be a woman. — C. JoyBell C.

This is for you, all the women of the world
Those who lived, all who ever will
this is for your love, mine is yours
Love is fate, I am here
Because you know the meaning of life
That begins and ends with a kiss
We are knights in shining ardor, who toil for you
And our children, it's a circle
So they will know this truth
Love is the sacred gospel, all we need to know
As your son and lover, my spirit lives imbued
With, from and by your wisdom and beauty
I am here to pay honor and homage to your soul
This is and will always be my devotion
This I dedicate, because through you I become whole — Trevor McShane

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 female body is something that's so beautiful. I wish women would be proud of their bodies and not diss other women for being proud of theirs. — Christina Aguilera

Birds in flight fascinate me. I admire eagles and falcons. I'm inspired by a feather but also its color, its graphics, its weightlessness and its engineering. It's so elaborate. In fact I try and transpose the beauty of a bird to women. — Alexander McQueen

Peace is the number one beautiful ornament you can wear, I really believe that. They say you should always wear a smile, but I don't believe that you should "always" wear a smile, seriously, you're going to look stupid! But peace, you should always carry peace within you, its the most beautifying thing you could ever have or do. Peace makes your heart beautiful and it makes you look beautiful, too. You want to have perfect physical posture when you stand, sit, and walk, and peace is the perfect posture of the soul, really. Try perfect posture outside as well as inside. Peace creates grace and grace gives peace. — C. JoyBell C.

I wish the trees would go into leaf that I might find out what they are. In their present undress I cannot recognise them. It's true that I doubt if I should know my best friends
men or women
with their clothes off. — Laura Lafargue

1. "It is what we believe about ourselves that determines how others see us"
2. (regarding friends) "cherish the good and pretend not to notice the harmless rest"
3. "oysters are a lot like women. It's how we survive the hurts in life that brings us strength and gives us our beauty — Beth Hoffman

It's just because I love the past that I want this house to look back on its glamourous moment of youth and beauty, and I want its stairs to creak as if to the footsteps of women with hoop skirts and men in boots and spurs. But they've made it into a blondined, rouged-up old woman of sixty. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Most women are dissatisfied with their appearance - it's the stuff that fuels the beauty and fashion industries. — Annie Lennox

Women can't tell east from west, so you use these ridiculous ways of getting from one place to another." "Ridiculous means? What exactly are you talking about?" "If you must know, a woman gives instructions to take a right at the beauty parlor on Main Street, and a man will tell you to head east." "It's the same thing, isn't it?" "No, it isn't," Kyle argued. "Men don't notice things like beauty parlors or red mailboxes. — Debbie Macomber

...so individuals have their flesh cut and pulled, surgery companies proclaim it as an empowering choice, and the stifling cultural ideals about women's appearance are left unscathed — Kat Banyard

We are brainwashed about a Woman's beauty...So true!
Majority of women have succumbed to men's and media's idea of beauty which is nothing but a 'commercial farce — Abha Maryada Banerjee

Women's beauty, like men's wit, is generally fatal to the owners. — Lord Chesterfield

Ancient one sleeping, waiting to rise
When earth's power bleeds sacred red
The mark strikes true; Queen Tsi Sgili will devise
He shall be washed from his entombing bed
Through the hand of the dead he is free
Terrible beauty, monstrous sight
Ruled again they shall be
Women shall kneel to his dark might
Kalona's song sounds sweet
As we slaughter with cold heat — Kristin Cast

The real problem here is a massive elephant in the room: our own culture. Our social values, our media - so influential on impressionable young girls - that have been allowed, for millenia, to send out this powerful, alienating message about girls and sport: that sport is unfeminine, that sport makes you sweaty and muscular, that sport is swearing and violence, that sport is ugliness in a world where women's sole priority, value and focus should be beauty and becoming an object of desire. — Anna Kessel

... each woman is a wonderful world unto herself. And monogamy? It's like choosing to live in a single town and never traveling to experience the beauty, history, and enchantment of all the other unique, wonderful places in the world. Why does love have to limit us?
Perhaps it doesn't. Only fear is restrictive. Love is expansive. And I wonder, since fear of enmeshment impels us to avoid commitment and fear of abandonment makes us possessive, what type of evolved relationship can emerge once those wounds are healed? — Neil Strauss

Today you are walking in Paris the women are all steeped in blood
It was and I'd rather not remember it was at beauty's decline — Guillaume Apollinaire

O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes,
The poets labouring all their days
To build a perfect beauty in rhyme
Are overthrown by a woman's gaze ... — William Butler Yeats

I say that inner beauty doesn't exist. That's something that unpretty women invented to justify themselves, — Osmel Sousa

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

The sensation of seeing extremely fine women, with superb forms, perfectly unconscious of undress, and yet evidently aware of their beauty and dignity, is worth a week's seasickness to experience ... To me the effect [of a Siva dance] was that of a dozen Rembrandts intensified into the most glowing beauty of life and motion. — Henry Adams

Even in their reading, More charged, too many women were prone to superficiality. In search of a passing knowledge of books and authors, many read anthologies of excerpted works, that selected the brightest passages but left out deeper contexts - eighteenth-century Reader's Digest were quite popular. More cautioned against a habit she viewed as cultivating a taste only for "delicious morsels," one that spits out "every thing which is plain." Good books, in contrast, require good readers: "In all well-written books, there is much that is good which is not dazzling; and these shallow critics should be taught, that it is for the embellishment of the more tame and uninteresting parts of his work, that the judicious poet commonly reserves those flowers, whose beauty is defaced when they are plucked from the garland into which he had so skillfully woven them. — Karen Swallow Prior

Women are mere "beauties" in men's culture so that culture can be kept male. When women in culture show character, they are not desirable, as opposed to the desirable. A beautiful heroine is a contradiction in terms, since heroism is about individuality, interesting and ever changing, while "beauty" is generic, boring, and inert. While culture works out moral dilemmas, "beauty" is amoral: If a woman is born resembling an art object, it is an accident of nature, a fickle consensus of mass perception, a peculiar coincidence
but it is not a moral act. From the "beauties" in male culture, women learn a bitter amoral lesson
that the moral lessons of their culture exclude them. — Naomi Wolf

Using one's beauty was the only way a smart girl could get by, at least that's how it was back then, though even for a smart girl there were really only three professions. You could be a nurse or a teacher or a wife. — Shannon Celebi

That's how powerful you are, girl ... You pretty, but pretty alone is not what people see. You the kinda pretty, the kinda beauty, that's like a mirror. Men and women see themselves in you, only now they so beautiful that they can't bear to see you go. — Walter Mosley

Harry leaned back, his hat over his inscrutable face.
"Well?" Ben nudged him. "Thomas Paine, or a nubile beauty from Sicily?"
"Clearly Thomas Paine. I'd be asleep now in my bed."
"Do you remember the name of the street they live on?"
"Let's see ... Crazy Street? Cuckoo Street? Commitment Street? Cranial Injury Inflicted by Enraged Sibling Street?"
"Canal Street! Thank you."
"I'm going to stop speaking."
"Harry, admit it, if you weren't so utterly uninterested in all women save Alice, you would be sitting on this train yourself."
"Ben Shaw, I hate to point out the startlingly obvious, but I am sitting on this train myself."
"Exactly!"
"Ugh."
"I'm surprised to learn that Lawrence is the world leader in the production of cotton and woven textiles. Are you?"
"Stunned. — Paullina Simons

The fact that it's black transforms it. Has the same effect on women that black stockings have on men. — Daphne Du Maurier

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

I was there to see beautiful naked women. So was everybody else. It's a common failing. — Robert A. Heinlein

Having your beautiful woman free and uncovered, for all to see, with everyone knowing that she's with who she chooses - you - and that no one else, no matter how much they want her or lust for her, can lay a finger on her." He focussed on Mae. "Tell Hansen what you studied in school."
She wasn't expecting the question and presumed he wasn't talking about her military training. "Music," she said.
Hansen, however, was one step behind. "You went to school?"
"All our women do," said Justin. "They can learn what they want, take on what professions they want, and be with the men they want. We don't cover them up either. We let them show off their beauty. And we don't let men who are full of themselves crush others who've done the work. A man who serves gets his rewards. They aren't snatched up by others. — Richelle Mead

By the 1980s beauty had come to play in women's status-seeking the same role as money plays in that of men: a defensive proof to aggressive competitors of womanhood or manhood. Since both value systems are reductive, neither reward is ever enough, and each quickly loses any relationship to real-life values. — Naomi Wolf

No! Beauty is emotional! That's why plastic surgery never works. Women who want to change their nose, lips, they don't understand that they are doing nothing except erasing their magic. — Mario Testino

The world will change when women reclaim their power as the sane, nurturing hands of love, which are ever reaching to cultivate a world of beauty, safety and harmony. — Bryant McGill

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

A wanton women is ripened fruit,' Constanze intoned,'begging to be plucked by the Goblin King. — S. Jae-Jones

Self-growth does not always mean that we've changed. It means that we've stopped listening to what others say we 'ought' to be doing and finally live our lives according to our own values. — Anthea Syrokou

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

Generally speaking, the greater a woman's beauty, the greater her modesty. — Friedrich Nietzsche

You have to appreciate life before you want to preserve it," she said.
"And it's the survivors who maintain the most light and poignant hold upon the beauties of living. Women know this more often than men because birth is the reflection of death. — Frank Herbert

She had the face of an angel, and the hair of the Devil's handmaiden. The freshly washed locks flowed around her in a waist-length curtain, waves and curls of molten red that contained every shade from cinnamon to strawberry-gold. It was the kind of hair that nature usually bestowed on homely women to atone for their lack of physical beauty.
But Vivien had a face and form that belonged in a Renaissance painting, except that the reality of her was more delicate and fresh than any painted image could convey. Now that her eyes were no longer swollen, the pure blue intensity of her gaze shone full and direct on him. Her mouth, tender and rose-tinted, was a marvel of nature. — Lisa Kleypas

Most women, when they ask me for beauty tips aren't really prepared for my answer, which is, there is no magic beauty wand that can transform you and make you beautiful. It takes practice and what you see on Rupaul's Drag Race is years and years of practice. — RuPaul

Mom! Look. This one is my favorite," Devin said, pulling out a faded pink dress with a red plaid sash. The crinoline petticoat underneath was so old and stiff it made snapping sounds, like beads or fire embers. She dropped the dress over her head, over her clothes. It brushed the floor. "When I'm old enough for it to fit me, I'm going to wear it with purple shoes," she said.
"A bold choice," Kate said as Devin dove back into the trunk. The attic in Kate's mother's house had always fascinated Devin with its promise of hidden treasures. When Kate's mother had been alive, she had let Devin eat Baby Ruth candy bars and drink grape soda and play in this old trunk full of dresses that generations of Morris women had worn to try entice rich men to marry them. Most of the clothes had belonged to Kate's grandmother Marilee, a renowned beauty who, like all the rest, had fallen in love with a poor man instead. — Sarah Addison Allen

Stop making someone else's looks your "#goals". By all means aspire to be a better version of your current self, but don't glorify others when you yourself are glorious. — Miya Yamanouchi

I've been successfully wearing my TWA during the fashion month in September 2015, but also I felt like my third appearance at a Victoria's Secret show would be more meaningful or impactful if I could help a few women embrace their natural beauty. — Maria Borges

On a recent HBO special, Roseanne Arnold, who, incidentally, collects Barbies, excoriated what she considered to be Barbie's middle-class-ness. Why didn't Mattel make, say, "trailer-park Barbie"? But to many upper-middle-class women, all post-1977 Barbies are Trailer Park Barbie. Ironically, given the knee-jerk antagonism to Barbie's body, it is one of her few attributes that doesn't scream "prole." Her thinness - indicative of an expensive gym membership and possibly a personal trainer - definitely codes her as middle- or upper-middle-class. In Distinction, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu notes that "working class women . . . are less aware of the 'market' value of beauty and less inclined to invest . . . sacrifices and money in cultivating their bodies." Likewise, Barbie's swanlike neck elevates her status. A stumpy neck is a lower-class attribute, Fussell says. — M.G. Lord

We have to nurture our young women and understand the beauty and the strength of being a woman. It's kind of a catch-22: Strength in women isn't appreciated, and vulnerability in women isn't appreciated. It's like, 'What the hell do you do?' What you do is you don't allow anyone to dictate who you are. — Jada Pinkett Smith

It's wrong for women to be constantly shy and embarrassed about their bodies. There are so many images of unattainable beauty that are so destructive. It's important to show how your body really is. As the cliche has it, beauty comes from within. — Alex Kingston

I'd rather be thought of as smart, capable, strong, and compassionate than beautiful. Those things all persist long after beauty fades. — Cassandra Duffy

This is what a woman is: unadorned, after children and work and age, and experience-these are the marks of living. — Zadie Smith

We need to insist on making culture out of our desire: making paintings, novels, plays and films potent and seductive and authentic enough to undermine and overwhelm the Iron Maiden. — Naomi Wolf

A memory: Isola as a toddler, sugarlump teeth, skin still smelling of milk. Hair that curled without use of an iron and sweet dresses that didn't matter were dirtied. When she was old enough, she demanded the usual suspects at bedtime: The Little Mermaid, Hansel and Gretel, Beauty and the Beast.
Even then, Mother's contempt for non-Pardieu fairytales was obvious.
'Hmph,' she snorted derisively, folding up her knees to perch on Isola's bed. 'Listen to me, Isola. The original Beauty's just an encouragement to young women to accept arranged marriages. What it's really saying to impressionable girls is, "Don't worry if your new husband is decades older than you, or ugly, or horrid. If you're sweet and obedient enough, you might just discover he's a prince in disguise!'

Mother's Most Lasting Advice
'Never be that girl, Isola. Never pick the beast or the wolf on the off-chance he won't devour you. — Allyse Near

When you judge a woman by her appearance, it doesn't define her, it defines you. Ladies, never allow yourself to be defined by someone's inability to appreciate your unique beauty. — Steve Maraboli

Ipsy's goal has always been to create a community that inspires women around the world to express their own unique beauty. — Michelle Phan

I saw a woman who physically and spiritually blocked out the definition of being celestial, and replaced it with her own divine beauty. She was transcendent. She was beyond astonishing in her presence. But what she truly did, which was beyond the scope of an average woman's power, was step above the barriers of reality and illusion with her pure, majestic, and omnipotent beauty. — Lionel Suggs

God's Word is the ultimate beauty treatment for every woman. — Elizabeth George

And would I be able to forgive him or myself if it crossed the mark? I loved this man and all of his flaws. I knew that he wasn't perfect. He was human, and had secrets that would make stronger women than me flee. But that was the beauty of love. It made us stronger. It gave us hearts of steel and guts of iron. I had a shield around me that could withstand a war for this man. I had a passion that could overcome mountains. My love for Xavier burned in my soul and ran through my veins, and I was willing to take this chance. I needed to show him that I could be there for him. — J.S. Cooper

This is the truth: we all desire to conquer the comely one, because it affirms our own worth. Speaking for the men of the world, we want to own the beauty of the woman we're fucking. We want to grasp that beauty, tightly in our greedy little fingers, to well and truly possess it, to make it ours. We want to do this as the woman shines her way through an orgasm. That's perfection. And while I can't speak for women, I imagine that they-whether they admit it or not-want the same thing: to possess the man, to own his rough handsomeness, if only for a few seconds. — Andrew Davidson

Everyone wants rather to be pleasing to women and that desire is not altogether, though it is very largely, a manifestation of vanity. But one cannot aim to be pleasing to women any more than one can aim to have taste, or beauty of expression, or happiness; for these things are not specific aims which one may learn to attain; they are descriptions of the adequacy of one's living. To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly. — J. Robert Oppenheimer