Keats spoke for all time when he said, "A thing of beauty is a joy
forever."--THACKERAY.

Beauty is an outward gift which is seldom despised except by those to
whom it has been refused.--GIBBON.

     What is beauty? Not the show
     Of shapely limbs and features. No.
           These are but flowers
           That have their dated hours
     To breathe their momentary sweets, then go.
           'Tis the stainless soul within
           That outshines the fairest skin.
                       --SIR A. HUNT.

I pray Thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within.--SOCRATES.

Happily there exists more than one kind of beauty. There is the
beauty of infancy, the beauty of youth, the beauty of maturity, and,
believe me, ladies and gentlemen, the beauty of age.--G.A. SALA.

There is no beauty on earth which exceeds the natural loveliness of
woman.--J. PETIT-SENN.

There is a self-evident axiom, that she who is born a beauty is half
married.--OUIDA.

Beauty attracts us men, but if, like an armed magnet it is pointed
with gold or silver beside, it attracts with tenfold power.--RICHTER.

If thou marry beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that
which, perchance, will neither last nor please thee one year.--RALEIGH.

It is seldom that beautiful persons are otherwise of great virtue.
--BACON.

The most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth.
--SHAFTESBURY.

Every year of my life I grow more convinced that it is wisest and best
to fix our attention on the beautiful and good and dwell as little as
possible on the dark and the base.--CECIL.

A woman possessing nothing but outward advantages is like a flower
without fragrance, a tree without fruit.--REGNIER.

All orators are dumb, when beauty pleadeth.--SHAKESPEARE.

Who has not experienced how, on near acquaintance, plainness becomes
beautified, and beauty loses its charm, exactly according to the
quality of the heart and mind? And from this cause am I of opinion
that the want of outward beauty never disquiets a noble nature or will
be regarded as a misfortune. It never can prevent people from being
amiable and beloved in the highest degree.--FREDERIKA BREMER.

Good nature will always supply the absence of beauty; but beauty
cannot supply the absence of good nature.--ADDISON.

There should be, methinks, as little merit in loving a woman for her
beauty as in loving a man for his prosperity; both being equally
subject to change.--POPE.

Socrates called beauty a short-lived tyranny; Plato, a privilege of
nature; Theophrastus, a silent cheat; Theocritus, a delightful
prejudice; Carneades, a solitary kingdom; Domitian said, that nothing
was more grateful; Aristotle affirmed that beauty was better than all
the letters of recommendation in the world; Homer, that 'twas a
glorious gift of nature, and Ovid, alluding to him, calls it a favor
bestowed by the gods.--FROM THE ITALIAN.

     Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good,
     A shining gloss, that fadeth suddenly;
     A flower that dies, when first it 'gins to bud;
     A brittle glass, that's broken presently;
     A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower,
     Lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour.
     And as good lost is seld or never found,
     As fading gloss no rubbing will refresh,
     As flowers dead lie wither'd on the ground,
     As broken glass no cement can redress,
     So beauty blemish'd once, for ever's lost,
     In spite of physic, painting, pain and cost.
                       --SHAKESPEARE.

     Give me a look, give me a face,
     That makes simplicity a grace;
     Robes loosely flowing, hair as free!
     Such sweet neglect more taketh me,
     Than all the adulteries of art;
     That strike mine eyes, but not my heart.
                       --BEN JONSON.