Secrecy is the element of all goodness; even virtue, even beauty is mysterious.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.

In Hollywood a girl’s virtue is much less important than her hairdo.

I should be a postage stamp, because that’s the only way I’ll ever get licked. I’m beautiful. I’m fast. I’m so mean I make medicine sick. I can’t possibly be beat.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

Everybody’s got that split between the beautiful and fragile, the hard and the dark.

A sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music – these seem to be an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence.

Ankles are nearly always neat and good-looking, but knees are nearly always not.

I have often said that the lure of flying is the lure of beauty.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.

When I was a seminarian, I was dazzled by a girl I met at an uncle’s wedding. I was surprised by her beauty, her intellectual brilliance… and, well, I was bowled over for quite a while.

Not being beautiful was the true blessing. Not being beautiful forced me to develop my inner resources. The pretty girl has a handicap to overcome.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But… it is better to be good than to be ugly.

Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.

It is easier to feel than to realize, or in any way explain, Yosemite grandeur. The magnitudes of the rocks and trees and streams are so delicately harmonized, they are mostly hidden.

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life – in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.

A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.

The good is the beautiful.

The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

The beautiful seems right by force of beauty, and the feeble wrong because of weakness.

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.

The internal machinery of life, the chemistry of the parts, is something beautiful. And it turns out that all life is interconnected with all other life.

There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

You don’t need to buy expensive cosmetics; almost anything will do if you know how to apply it.

We should not be so taken up in the search for truth, as to neglect the needful duties of active life; for it is only action that gives a true value and commendation to virtue.

Suspicion is far more to be wrong than right; more often unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

There are certain shades of limelight that can wreck a girl’s complexion.

I will buy any creme, cosmetic, or elixir from a woman with a European accent.

Beauty is the promise of happiness.

There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all its virtues are of no avail.

There is no austerity equal to a balanced mind, and there is no happiness equal to contentment; there is no disease like covetousness, and no virtue like mercy.

Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

Africa is probably one of the most beautiful places I have ever been.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

The diversity of India, of our civilization, is actually a thing of beauty, which is something we are extremely proud of.

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.

Consider a tree for a moment. As beautiful as trees are to look at, we don’t see what goes on underground – as they grow roots. Trees must develop deep roots in order to grow strong and produce their beauty. But we don’t see the roots. We just see and enjoy the beauty. In much the same way, what goes on inside of us is like the roots of a tree.

Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty.

Strength was the virtue of paganism; obedience is the virtue of Christianity.

Who ever is out of patience is out of possession of their soul.

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.

Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!

You’re beautiful, like a May fly.

Writing is such a strange, utterly mysterious process. First, there was nothing; then, suddenly, there was something. I don’t know where thoughts are born. Where the hell does it come from? I don’t know. I really don’t know.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

The language of all the interpretations, the translations, of the Judaic Bible and the Christian Bible, is musical, just wonderful. I read the Bible to myself; I’ll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.

The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.