“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”

Donna Tartt

Donna Tartt - “Beauty is terror. Whatever we call...” 1

Similar quotes

“It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, "more like deer than human being." To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.”

Donna Tartt
Read more

“The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before being vanquished.”

Charles Baudelaire
Read more

“Beauty belongs to the beloved who returns the gaze, in whose eyes we see the sun. But in this . . . beauty, in the mutual gaze, also lies the beginning of terror --awe, idealization, overstimulation, violation, loss.”

Jessica Benjamin
Read more

“Fear has the role we give it. We are able to empower or poison ourselves to whatever degree we want. This is the beauty of our design.”

Steve Maraboli
Read more

“Whatever the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth -whether it existed before or not”

John Keats
Read more