Benevolent Beauty

"If we remain humble and grounded in nature's wisdom, our mind will guide us safely through the confines of unawareness and the blindness of ignorance." — Erik Pevernagie, Belgian painter & writer (b. 1939)

"The observation of nature is part of an artist's life; it enlarges his form and knowledge, keeps him fresh and from working only by formula, and feeds inspiration." — Henry Moore, British sculptor (1898–1986)

"A scene of beauty in itself alone gives innocent joy, with unspeakable strength of persuasion to purity and sweetness — no moral label needed, for beauty is the moral." — William Holman Hunt, British painter (1827–1910) — adapted

"He who lives in the ideal, and leaves it expressed in society or in art, enjoys a double immortality. The eternal has absorbed him while he lived, and when he is dead his influence brings others to the same absorption." — George Santayana, philosopher & poet (1863–1952)

"When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other." — Chinese Proverb

"Beauty is momentary in the mind — the fitful tracing of a portal; but in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies; the body's beauty lives." — Wallace Stevens, U.S. poet (1879–1955)

Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. — John Keats, English poet (1795–1821)

"No one has ever been able to show me precisely the right way... If I had to choose between beauty and truth, I should not hesitate; it is beauty I should keep. There is nothing true in the world except beauty." — Anatole France, French novelist & critic (1844–1924)

"Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern." — A. N. Whitehead, philosopher (1861–1947)

"Fashion appeals to the senses and comes from gut feeling... True fashion comes straight out of the jungle — beauty is primal, not invented." — John B. Fairchild, U.S. publisher (1927–)

"For Beauty being the best of all we know sums up the unsearchable and secret aims of nature." — Robert Bridges, British poet (1844–1930)

"Perhaps we shall some day be strong enough and clear enough in soul to see the shining beauty of even the darkest truth." — Will Durant, historian & philosopher

"Ubuntu — I am because we are. Beauty shared multiplies itself; beauty withheld withers at the root." — African philosophical tradition

"The aesthetic sense is the most undervalued organ of civilisation. Where art flourishes, the spirit of a people flourishes. Where beauty is denied, the soul of a nation slowly starves." — BEYONDISM · African Renaissance Statement

"Nature is the first and greatest artist. The African continent — its savannahs, its rivers, its starlit skies — is the most magnificent gallery ever conceived." — BEYONDISM · R#60

"The self-actualizing person does not seek beauty — they become the vessel through which beauty flows into the world. They are not admirers of the cosmos; they are the cosmos admiring itself." — BEYONDISM · BQ#11

"What a man can be, he must be. And to be fully human is to be fully alive to beauty — in a child's face, in an equation's elegance, in the silence before dawn." — After Abraham Maslow, psychologist (1908–1970)

"The peak experience is nothing other than an encounter with Benevolent Beauty — those moments when the universe touches you with its abundance and you feel, suddenly, supremely alive." — BEYONDISM · R#60

"A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe... Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." — Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder, is as good as dead." — Albert Einstein

"When all seven chakras of your awareness bloom at once, the world reveals itself as one seamless, unbroken act of Benevolent Beauty — and you are both its witness and its author." — BEYONDISM · BQ#11 · Crown Revelation