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In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty.
A heart in love with beauty never grows old.
Such is beauty ever,....neither here nor there, nor there nor then,....neither
in Rome nor in Athens, but wherever there is a soul to admire. If I seek her elswhere because I do not find her at home, my search will prove a fruitless one. Nature is beautiful only as a place where a life is to be lived , it is not beautiful to him who has not resolved on a beautiful life. The beauty of the earth answers exactly to your demand and appreciation. So live your life that only the most beautiful wild-flowers will spring up where you have dwelt,.....harebells, violets, and blue-eyed grass.
As much beauty as you have in you, that much, and
only that much you will see without you. The perception of beauty
is a moral test. Beauty comes by
participation. Like can only be known by like. Man projects beauty
upon the phenomenal world and, in
most cases thinks that he simply experiences it.
Beauty is not in the face, or the body, it is a light in the heart.
Is it, that beauty can never be grasped? The accepted and betrothed lover has lost the wildest charm of his maiden in her acceptance of him. She was heaven whilst he pursued her as a star: she cannot be heaven, if she stoops to such a one as he.
I suffer, every day, from the want of perception of beauty in people.
Seek truth and beauty together; for you will never find them apart.
But is there not something to be said for the memory of the various forms of beauty? That is the resource of a man whose life is without beauty in the present, so that, for lack of it now, he grasps at the memory of what has been.
Those that desire earthly procreation are satisfied with the beauty
found on earth, the beauty of image and of body; it is because they are
strangers to the Archetype, the source of even the attraction they feel
towards what is lovely here. There are Souls to whom earthly
beauty is a leading to the memory of that in the higher realm and these
love the earthly as an image; those that have not attained to this memory
do not understand what is happening within them, and take the image for
the reality. Once there is perfect self-control, it is no fault to
enjoy the beauty of earth; where appreciation degenerates into carnality,
there is sin. The less the desire for procreation, the greater is
the contentment with beauty alone, yet procreation aims at the engendering
of beauty; it is the expression of a lack; the subject is conscious of
insufficiency and, wishing to produce beauty, feels that the way is to
beget in a beautiful form. Where the procreative desire is lawless
or against the purposes of nature, the first inspiration has been natural,
but they have diverged from the way, they have slipped and fallen, and
they grovel; they neither understand whither Love sought to lead them nor
have they any instinct to production; they have not mastered the right
use of the images of beauty; they do not know what the Authentic Beauty
is. Still this Love is of mixed quality. On the one hand there is
in it the lack which keeps it craving: on the other, it is not entirely
destitute; the deficient seeks more of what it has, and certainly nothing
absolutely void of good would ever go seeking the good.
The guiding thought is this: that the beauty perceived on material things is borrowed.
The soul needs beauty as much as the body needs food.
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is
beautiful;
for beauty is God's handwriting ~ a wayside sacrament.
Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every
fair flower,
and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.
~ Emerson
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