Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.

La belleza, según la sentimos, es algo indescriptible; jamás puede decirse lo que es ni lo que significa.

Beauty . . . cannot be interpreted. It is not an empirically verifiable fact; it is not a quantity.

Beauty is not a human invention.

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.

At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.

Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others. To seek the real beauty, or real deformity, is as fruitless an enquiry, as to pretend to ascertain the real sweet or real bitter.

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.

The house, the stars, the desert — what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible!

Beauty presents an indeterminate concept of Understanding, the sublime an indeterminate concept of Reason.

Beauty — and all the values that derive from beauty — are not measured and evaluated in terms of the dollar.

Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical.

BEAUTY, n. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.

Beauty is itself so unattainable that it escapes altogether; and the true artist, like the true Mystic, can never rest