She was a triumph over ugliness, so often more beguiling than real beauty, if only because it contains paradox.

There is no overstating the triumph of having remained motivated by beauty in taking down the ugliest malignancies of human nature’s grasp for power.

She had the most beautiful awkwardness

Too old to dream of perfection, perhaps, she had instead discovered a certain delicious appeal in flaws.

Beauty by mistake' — the final phase in the history of beauty.

All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us — all who knew her — felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used — to silence our own nightmares. And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt. We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength.

And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.

Hard is the task to shape that beauty’s praise, Whose judgment scorns the homage flattery pays! But praising Amoret we cannot err, No tongue o’ervalues Heaven, or flatters her! Yet she, by Fate’s perverseness — she alone Would doubt our truth, nor deem such praise her own! Adorning Fashion, unadorn’d by dress, Simple from taste, and not from carelessness; Discreet in gesture, in deportment mild, Not stiff with prudence, nor uncouthly wild: No state has AMORET! no studied mien; She frowns no GODDESS, and she moves no QUEEN. The softer charm that in her manner lies Is framed to captivate, yet not surprise; It justly suits th’ expression of her face, — ’Tis less than dignity, and more than grace! On her pure cheek the native hue is such, That, form’d by Heav’n to be admired so much, The hand divine, with a less partial care, Might well have fix’d a fainter crimson there, And bade the gentle inmate of her breast, — Inshrined Modesty! — supply the rest.

That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal: from which it follows that irregularity - that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are an essential part and characteristic of beauty.

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

There is a certain tyranny about perfection, a certain exhaustion about it even, something that denies the viewer a role in its creation and that asserts itself with all the dogmatism of an unambiguous statement. True beauty cannot be measured because it is fluctuating, it has only a few angles from which it may be seen, and then not in all lights and at all times. It flirts dangerously with ugliness, it takes risks with itself, it does not side comfortably with mathematical rules of proportion, it draws its appeal from precisely those areas that will also lend themselves to ugliness. Nothing can be beautiful that does not take a calculated risk with ugliness.

Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty. Blushing has little less power; and modesty in general, which is a tacit allowance of imperfection, is itself considered as an amiable quality, and certainly heightens every other that is so.

Funny how imperfections on the outside mean something splendid beneath.

She was a very beautiful person who was missing something very ugly. Her winnings were the absence of something, and this quality hung around her.

Women who are either indisputably beautiful or indisputably ugly are best flattered upon the score of their understandings; but those who are in a state of mediocrity are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least their graces, for every woman who is not absolutely ugly thinks herself handsome; but not hearing often that she is so is the more grateful and the more obliged to the few who tell her so; whereas a decided and conscious beauty looks upon every tribute paid to her beauty only as her due, but wants to shine and to be considered on the side of her understanding…