Esthetics Quotes

“Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying

“I had a microscopic eye for the blemish, for the grain of ugliness which to me constituted the sole beauty of the object.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn

“To me, science is an expression of the human spirit, which reaches every sphere of human culture. It gives an aim and meaning to existence as well as a knowledge, understanding, love, and admiration for the world. It gives a deeper meaning to morality and another dimension to esthetics.”
― Isidor Isaac Rabi

“Aunque un archivo valioso de los niños perdidos debería estar compuesto, en lo fundamental, por una serie de testimonios o historias orales que registren sus propias voces contando sus experiencias, no me parece correcto convertir a esos niños, sus vidas, en material de consumo mediático. ¿Por qué? ¿Para qué? ¿Para qué otros puedan escucharlos y sentir lástima? ¿Rabia? ¿Y después hacer qué? Nadie decide no ir a trabajar y comenzar una huelga de hambre tras escuchar la radio en la mañana. Todo el mundo sigue con su vida, sin importar la gravedad de las noticias que escuchan, a menos que la gravedad se refiera al clima.”
― Valeria Luiselli, Lost Children Archive

“Bonaparte chantait presque aussi faux que
Louis XV”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Companions of Jehu

“Art is not there for us to enjoy, art is there is to save our life.”
― Neel Burton

“The deep question is: Why does nature embody so much symmetry? We do not know the full answer to this question.

However, we have some partial answers. Symmetry leads to economy, and nature, like human beings, seems to prefer economy.

If we think of nature as a vast ongoing experiment, constantly trying out different possibilities of design, then those designs that cost the least energy or that require the fewest different parts to come together at the right time will take precedence, just as the principle of natural selection says that organisms with the best ability to survive will dominate over time.

One physical principle that governs nature over and over is the “energy principle”: nature evolves to minimize energy.”
― Alan Lightman, The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew

“Сам поэт должен научиться писать свои вещи в перевёрнутом виде, чтобы только в зеркале искусства, претерпев ещё одно обращение, становился разборчив и удобочитаем его почерк.”
― Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, Vorschule der Ästhetik

“We need beauty because it makes us yearn to be worthy of it. -Mary Oliver”
― Mary Oliver

“What's Hecuba to him, or he to her, that he should weep for her?”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet