96 Inspiring Beauty Quotes

In a world that constantly bombards us with varying ideals and standards, it's refreshing to encounter words that truly capture the essence of beauty. Beyond the surface, real beauty often lies in the unexpected, the unseen, and the deeply felt moments of life. To celebrate this multifaceted concept, we’ve gathered a curated collection of the top 96 Inspiring Beauty Quotes. Each quote not only serves as a reminder of the profound beauty that exists in our everyday lives but also encourages us to perceive and appreciate the aesthetic in places we might otherwise overlook. Join us on this journey of inspiration and let these words rekindle your inner sense of wonder and appreciation for the world around you.

1. “When a girl is beautiful, she gets to pick - she never has to wait for someone to choose her.” - Adriana Trigiani

2. “A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful.” - Karl Kraus

3. “The beauty of the world...has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.” - Virginia Woolf

4. “Never forget:we walk on hell,gazing at flowers.” - Kobayashi Issa

5. “The fairy tale is not the conclusion, but the doorway to a more brilliant reality. Pushed onto a pedestal as the final answer their worth is misshapen and distorted. The world’s story may end with a couple living happily ever after but our life in Christ enables the intimacy of the human relationship to illuminate an eternal perfection. In a balanced perspective, neither denigrated nor exalted from their intended place, fairy tales are a lovely and exhilarating part of life.” - Natalie Nyquist

6. “After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.” - Richard Dawkins

7. “At the beauty of what she had stumbled onto, at the fear that something terrible would happen because she was not vigilant enough. She cried at the fear of something so good that she would not be brave enough to bear it.” - Rebecca Wells

8. “No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy

9. “I don't mind being burdened with being glamorous and sexual. Beauty and femininity are ageless and can't be contrived, and glamour, although the manufacturers won't like this, cannot be manufactured. Not real glamour; it's based on femininity.” - Marilyn Monroe

10. “Some of us get dipped in flat, some in satin, some in gloss...." He turned to me. "But every once in a while, you find someone who's iridescent, and when you do, nothing will ever compare.” - Wendelin Van Draanen

11. “The beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” - William Carlos Williams

12. “When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect - they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul - not of intellect, or of heart.” - Edgar Allan Poe

13. “There is no beauty in sadness. No honor in suffering. No growth in fear. No relief in hate. It’s just a waste of perfectly good happiness.” - Katerina Stoykova Klemer

14. “The first stab of love is like a sunset, a blaze of color -- oranges, pearly pinks, vibrant purples...” - Anna Godbersen

15. “[She] was a remarkable looking woman. Remarkable in that she wasn’t what most people would call beautiful. But she oozed a raw femaleness that I was certain made most women uncomfortable and sent men walking into walls. And when she smiled. Well. That was magic.” - Beth Hoffman

16. “...when he looks at Beauty in the only way that Beauty can be seen - only then will it become possible for him to give birth not to images of virtue (because he's in touch with no images), but to true virtue [arete] (because he is in touch with true Beauty). The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he.” - Plato

17. “Both the grand and the intimate aspects of nature can be revealed in the expressive photograph. Both can stir enduring affirmations and discoveries, and can surely help the spectator in his search for identification with the vast world of natural beauty and wonder surrounding him.” - Ansel Adams

18. “Beauty is the virtue of the body as virtue is the beauty of the soul” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

19. “Julian is bluff and sturdy, royal; he possesses a gracefully muscular, equine beauty so natural it suggests that beauty itself is a fundamental human condition and not a mutation in the general design. ” - Michael Cunningham

20. “He looked into the crowd for approval, saw his mother and father. He waved and they waved back. Smiles and Indian teeth. They were both drunk. Everything familiar and welcome. Everything beautiful.” - Sherman Alexie

21. “The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain.” - Oscar Wilde

22. “Good human work honors God's work. Good work uses no thing without respect, both for what it is in itself and for its origin. It uses neither tool nor material that it does not respect and that it does not love. It honors nature as a great mystery and power, as an indispensable teacher, and as the inescapable judge of all work of human hands. It does not dissociate life and work, or pleasure and work, or love and work, or usefulness and beauty. To work without pleasure or affection, to make a product that is not both useful and beautiful, is to dishonor God, nature, the thing that is made, and whomever it is made for. This is blasphemy: to make shoddy work of the work of God. But such blasphemy is not possible when the entire Creation is understood as holy and when the works of God are understood as embodying and thus revealing His spirit. (pg. 312, Christianity and the Survival of Creation)” - Wendell Berry

23. “The secret to modeling is not being perfect. What one needs is a face that people can identify in a second. You have to be given what’s needed by nature, and what’s needed is to bring something new.” - Karl Lagerfeld

24. “The forest has shrunkAnd fear has expanded,The forests have dwindled,There are less animals now, less courage and less lightning, less beauty and the moon lies bare, deflowered by force and then abandoned.” - Visar Zhiti

25. “What keeps earth air breathable? Not oxygen alone. The earth is a freer place to breathe in, every time you love without calculating a return -- every time you make your drudgeries and routines still more inefficient by stopping to experience the shock of beauty wherever it unpredictably flickers.” - Peter Viereck

26. “One is never over-dressed or underdressed with a Little Black Dress.” - Karl Lagerfeld

27. “I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men, and the colour of things: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all things in a phrase, all existence in an epigram: whatever I touched I made beautiful” - Oscar Wilde

28. “In so many senseless deaths, beauty is to blame.” - Suzanne Finnamore

29. “Nothing overdone, nothing racy, which made her all the more alluring.” - Keith Ablow

30. “The surpluses will have to be expended somehow, and trust the oligarchs to find a way. Magnificent roads will be built. There will be great achievements in science, and especially in art. When the oligarchs have completely mastered the people, they will have time to spare for other things. They will become worshippers of beauty. They will become art-lovers. And under their direction and generously rewarded, will toil the artists. The result will be great art; for no longer, as up to yesterday, will the artists pander to the bourgeois taste of the middle class. It will be great art, I tell you, and wonder cities will arise that will make tawdry and cheap the cities of old time. And in these cities will the oligarchs dwell and worship beauty” - Jack London

31. “Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.” - Toni Morrison

32. “Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"..."It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...” - Frances Hodgson Burnett

33. “She was the most beautiful creature on Earth - her hair said so in that language only hair can speak.” - Gabriel Bá

34. “Little sister don't you worry about a thing todayTake the heat from the sunLittle sisterI know that everything is not okBut you're like honey on my tongueTrue love never can be rentBut only true love can keep beauty innocentI could never take a chanceOf losing love to find romanceIn the mysterious distanceBetween a man and a womanNo I could never take a chance'Cause I could never understandThe mysterious distanceBetween a man and a womanYou can run from loveAnd if it's really love it will find youCatch you by the heelBut you can't be numb for loveThe only pain is to feel nothing at allHow can I hurt when I'm holding you?I could never take a chanceOf losing love to find romanceIn the mysterious distanceBetween a man and a womanAnd you're the one, there's no-one elsewho makes me want to lose myselfIn the mysterious distanceBetween a man and a womanBrown eyed girl across the streetOn rue Saint DivineI thought this is the one for meBut she was already mineYou were already mine...Little sisterI've been sleeping in the street againLike a stray dogLittle sisterI've been trying to feel complete againBut you're gone and so is GodThe soul needs beauty for a soul mateWhen the soul wants...the soul waits ...No I could never take a chanceOf losing love to find romanceIn the mysterious distanceBetween a man and a womanFor love and FAITH AND SEX and fearAnd all the things that keep us hereIn the mysterious distanceBetween a man and a womanHow can I hurt when I'm holding you?” - U2

35. “Beauty has a persuasive power all its own.” - Janette Rallison

36. “Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.” - Kahlil Gibran

37. “... when I saw any of those kinds of beauty I knew I was alive, and not just in the sense that when I hit my thumb with a hammer I knew I was alive, but rather in the sense that I was partaking of something--something was passing through me that it was in my nature to be a part of.” - Neal Stephenson

38. “A pretty face may be enough to catch a man, but it takes character and good nature to hold him.” - Thomas More

39. “She was so intelligent that she could think herself into beauty. Intelligence...they don't talk about it much, the poets, but when a woman is intelligent and passionate and good...” - Eva Ibbotson

40. “Everything about riding a bicycle compels you towards beauty.” - BikeSnobNYC

41. “What makes art Christian art? Is it simply Christian artists painting biblical subjects like Jeremiah? Or, by attaching a halo, does that suddenly make something Christian art? Must the artist’s subject be religious to be Christian? I don’t think so. There is a certain sense in which art is its own justification. If art is good art, if it is true art, if it is beautiful art, then it is bearing witness to the Author of the good, the true, and the beautiful” - R.C. Sproul

42. “Peace is the number one beautiful ornament you can wear, I really believe that. They say you should always wear a smile, but I don't believe that you should "always" wear a smile, seriously, you're going to look stupid! But peace, you should always carry peace within you, its the most beautifying thing you could ever have or do. Peace makes your heart beautiful and it makes you look beautiful, too. You want to have perfect physical posture when you stand, sit, and walk, and peace is the perfect posture of the soul, really. Try perfect posture outside as well as inside. Peace creates grace and grace gives peace.” - C. JoyBell C.

43. “She had once been described, by one who saw below the surface, as a perfectly beautiful woman in an absolutely plain shell.” - Florence L. Barclay

44. “There's nothing more inspiring than the complexity and beauty of the human heart.” - Cynthia Hand

45. “... keeping her wild-honey-and-chamomile-soaked hair from falling into her oatmeal-and-yogurt face mask” - Emma McLaughlin

46. “For one of the first pressures that bear down on American girls is the pressure not only to be liked but to be like everyone else. This initial feat of self-transformation often involves loosening one's grip on that quiet sense of inner self and hitching one's wagon to a single standard of beauty. The stress of leaping through that hoop insinuates itself into the young heart and soul with a vengeance, and insecurities go from being hard little buds of confusion to overripe, snarled and tyrannical fruits that hang on the vine as we age.” - Debra Ollivier

47. “There were far worse strategies in life than to try to make each aspect of one's existence a minor work of art.” - Pat Conroy

48. “There is desire in the perfect, beauty in the imperfect.Thus I lust over the flawless,and fall amorously forceless to the flawed.” - Ilyas Kassam

49. “We were all monsters and bastards, and we were all beautiful.” - Rachel Hartman

50. “When you were in a room with Kurtis James, whether it was one or a hundred other people, Kurtis seemed to be the only one there” - Dee Remy

51. “If we are exhorted to play simple melodies with beauty rather than difficult ones with error, the same should be applied to writing; simple words greater effect.” - Sonia Rumzi

52. “Big don't mean ugly, and thin sho don't mean pretty. If a person wants to be pretty, they gotta walk pretty, talk pretty and act pretty. Can't nobody take pretty from you.” - Daniel Black

53. “We can make room for more experiences of radiance, peace, and beauty; and when we do, they arrive. When we make an intention to experience peace, when we value it enough to make room for it and invite it into our busy lives, it arrives bearing gifts. We make room for this guest, not by doing anything, but by just being, just allowing ourselves to rest, once and for all, in this sweet moment with no agenda, no purpose, no reason, but just to experience the moment as it is. We make room for peace and happiness by just noticing them. We notice that they are already here, and noticing them brings them more strongly into focus. Peace and happiness are always here, but they often go unnoticed.” - Gina Lake

54. “The old oak, utterly transformed, draped in a tent of sappy dark green, basked faintly, undulating in the rays of the evening sun. Of the knotted fingers, the gnarled excrecenses, the aged grief and mistrust- nothing was to be seen. Through the rough, century-old bark, where there were no twigs, leaves had burst out so sappy, so young, that is was hard to believe that the aged creature had borne them. "Yes, that is the same tree," thought Prince Andrey, and all at once there came upon him an irrational, spring feeling of joy and renewal. All the best moments of his life rose to his memory at once. Austerlitz, with that lofty sky, and the dead, reproachful face of his wife, and Pierre on the ferry, and the girl, thrilled by the beauty of the night, and that night and that moon- it all rushed at once into his mind.” - Leo Tolstoy

55. “He's soft and strong at the same time; beautiful and cold like a polished japanese katana.” - Kazuma Kodaka

56. “Jewelry takes people's minds off your wrinkles” - Sarah Phillips

57. “A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience.” - Naomi Wolf

58. “The mass depiction of the modern woman as a "beauty" is a contradiction: Where modern women are growing, moving, and expressing their individuality, as the myth has it, "beauty" is by definition inert, timeless, and generic. That this hallucination is necessary and deliberate is evident in the way "beauty" so directly contradicts women's real situation.” - Naomi Wolf

59. “...the law of empathy, by which he could, by his will, transfer himself into an object or a work of art, and thus inflence the outer world. He did not feel redeemed by the work he did. He did not seek redemption. He sought to see what others did not, the projection of his imagination.” - Patti Smith

60. “We walked always in beauty, it seemed to me. We walked and looked about, or stood and looked. Sometimes, less often, we would sit down. We did not often speak. The place spoke for us and was a kind of speech. We spoke to each other in the things we saw.” - Wendell Berry

61. “I learned a little of beauty - enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth - and I found, moreover, that there was no great literary tradition; there was only the tradition of the eventful death of every literary tradition.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

62. “The maturing of a woman who has continued to grow is a beautiful thing to behold.Or, if your ad revenue or your seven-figure salary or your privileged sexual status depend on it, it is an operable condition.” - Naomi Wolf

63. “She wins who calls herself beautiful and challenges the world to change to truly see her.” - Naomi Wolf

64. “Sadly, the signals that allow men and women to find the partners who most please them are scrambled by the sexual insecurity initiated by beauty thinking. A woman who is self-conscious can't relax to let her sensuality come into play. If she is hungry she will be tense. If she is "done up" she will be on the alert for her reflection in his eyes. If she is ashamed of her body, its movement will be stilled. If she does not feel entitled to claim attention, she will not demand that airspace to shine in. If his field of vision has been boxed in by "beauty"--a box continually shrinking--he simply will not see her, his real love, standing right before him.” - Naomi Wolf

65. “Never," enjoins a women's magazine, "mention the size of his [penis] in public...and never, ever let him know that anyone else knows or you may find it shrivels up and disappears, serving you right." That quotation acknowledges that critical sexual comparison is a direct anaphrodisiac when applied to men; either we do not yet recognize that it has exactly the same effect on women, or we do not care, or we understand on some level that right now that effect is desirable and appropriate.A man is unlikely to be brought within earshot of women as they judge men's appearance, height, muscle tone, sexual technique, penis size, personal grooming, or taste in clothes--all of which we do. The fact is that women are able to view men just as men view women, as objects for sexual and aesthetic evaluation; we too are effortlessly able to choose the male "ideal" from a lineup and if we could have male beauty as well as everything else, most of us would not say no. But so what? Given all that, women make the choice, by and large, to take men as human beings first.” - Naomi Wolf

66. “Nobody is worthy to be loved. The fact that God loves man shows us that in the divine order of ideal things it is written that eternal love is to be given to what is eternally unworthy. Or if that phrase seems to be a bitter one to bear, let us say that everybody is worthy of love, except him who thinks he is.” - Oscar Wilde

67. “I may enter a zone of transcendence, in which I marvel at all the accidents of fate, since the beginning of life on earth, that led to my genes being created and my standing in this particular garden in a contemplative and imagining mind. I’ve been reading recently how reflection evolved. what a fascinating solution to the rigors of survival…how amazing that a few basic ingredients- the same ones that form the mountains, plants, and rivers- when arranged differently and stressed could result in us.More and more of late, I find myself standing outside of life, with a sense of the human saga laid out before me. it is a private vision, balanced between youth and old age, a vision in which I understand how caught up in striving we humans get, and a little of why, and how difficult it is even to recognize, since it feels integral to our nature and is. but I find it interesting that, according to many religions, life and begins and ends in a garden.” - Diane Ackerman

68. “Elegance is a glowing inner peace. Grace is an ability to give as well as to receive and be thankful. Mystery is a hidden laugh always ready to surface! Glamour only radiates if there is a sublime courage & bravery within: glamour is like the moon; it only shines because the sun is there.” - C. JoyBell C.

69. “I am the eye that beholds... And I am the dreamer that paints the stars in the night sky... For I am the one they call artist, and you call Love.” - Solange nicole

70. “The woman laughed again. She was the loudest person in the cave. Eena wondered if perhaps she was talking to a female Ghengat. Curiosity got the best of her and she turned around to look, surprised to find neither a Ghengat nor a Harrowbethian woman, but a Mishmorat. A striking, cheetah-spotted Mishmorat with straight lengths of charcoal hair and the most alluring dark eyes in existence. This bronzed female was the same size as Eena but observably more muscular. She appeared to be a mix of cheetah, Arabian princess, and gladiator in tight-fitting pants. Eena paused, dropping the stone in her hands. “Kira?” she breathed.“Hmmm,” the woman grumbled. Her painted eyes scrunched with displeasure. The look was still stunning. “I see my reputation precedes me.” Eena gawked as if a legendary ghost had been resurrected. “You’re alive?” - Richelle E. Goodrich

71. “Her life was like a burst of wild, flowing Chinese calligraphy, written under the influence of alcohol.” - Wei Hui

72. “A mode of conduct, a standard of courage, discipline, fortitude and integrity can do a great deal to make a woman beautiful.” - Jacqueline Bisset

73. “Ah, and then her beautiful face…actually, the level and angle that she was holding the umbrella, the whole time as she passed within Suresh’s view, only allowed him to see the bottom of her chin at most. Still, with a body as beautiful as hers, Suresh was quite certain that her face would be nothing less than positively stunning!” - Andrew James Pritchard

74. “It's not the beauty in the face that makes people beautiful, wonderful, amazing , graceful or great, it's the beauty in a persons heart that makes everything beautiful and worth it. ♥” - Elena Toledo

75. “You turn dark shadows into canopies of hope and dry grass into gold.My heart is spoiled and my breath consumed when the beauty of earthgives a glimmer of understanding to the beauty of You.” - amy litzelman

76. “No time to see, in broad daylight,Streams full of stars, like skies at night.No time to turn at Beauty's glance,And watch her feet, how they can dance.No time to wait till her mouth canEnrich that smile her eyes began.” - W.H. Davies

77. “Busy with the ugliness of the expensive success We forget the easiness of free beautyLying sad right around the corner, Only an instant removed, Unnoticed and squandered.” - Dejan Stojanovic

78. “Beauty is a cheap word, but beauty remains priceless.” - Dejan Stojanovic

79. “Karl was no glamour boy. But even during this first meeting I discovered he had something better. The kind of intelligence that's more attractive than physical beauty.” - Aidan Chambers

80. “I want something good to die for. . . to make it beautiful to live.” - Stacey T. Hunt

81. “Do not ridicule my effort. Everybody likes a comedian’s company. That’s why they give them tips after watching theshow, not their hard earned money for a mutual fund investment. Give him tips, not your heart. I guess youunderstand the difference.” - Ravindra Shukla

82. “Maybe we don't have the same definition of about what's beautiful. So define it. Define true beauty.” - Justina Chen Headley

83. “...the most beautiful things don't always make you happy - often they make you weep...” - John Geddes

84. “Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.” - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

85. “The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

86. “There is no one to tell this to and yet it seems very important to get this right. The reality and what it is like to escape it. That even now it is sometimes too beautiful to bear.” - Peter Heller

87. “Music is, for me, like a beautiful mosaic which God has put together. He takes all the pieces in his hand, throws them into the world, and we have to recreate the picture from the pieces.” - Jean Sibelius

88. “When it comes to beauty whatever makes you look good and feel good is right.” - François Nars

89. “I see I have this patience to wait it out, and the truth is no matter how dark I feel I would never take my own life, because when the darkness is over, then what a blessing is the feeblest ray of light!” - Valerie Martin

90. “The simple truth is that love is a part of who we are, not something that others "give" to us if we're worthy of it. We're taught that if we just find that right person, and that person "falls in love" with us, everything will be fine. We're not taught about recognizing the love that is a part of our spirits, the love that we radiate when we recognize the beauty and need in all the people that surround us. Love is ours to share, at all moments and in all situations, but for some reason we fear doing so.” - Tom Walsh

91. “People from different cultures have different definitions for beauty. Isn't that sad to judge others with our standards... rather than appreciate them?” - Mizuki Nomura

92. “And that was the thing: you couldn't just stand there gawking at the world. A car slipped by. Then another. It was as if she'd stood frozen by the river of the world and gratefully stepped back into it, resuming her place... The world waited, cold, grim, alive, beautiful. There was no saying no to it.” - Liz Rosenberg

93. “Your brothers are the foolish ones for not seeing the strength in beautiful things.” - Kristin Cashore

94. “There is an art to writing, and it is not always disclosure. The act itself can be beautiful, revelatory, and private.” - Terry Tempest Williams

95. “If I were born with such beauty I would have claimed God’s throne” - M.F. Moonzajer

96. “I was thinking how you can't tell if a person's beautiful or not by her shadow...” - Shannon Hale