Philosophy on beauty
7 passages from 7 thinkers — Plato, Friedrich Nietzsche, David Hume, Albert Camus, Henry David Thoreau and others — on beauty.
“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination.”
“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.”
“We have exiled beauty; the Greeks took up arms for her.”
“The perception of beauty is a moral test.”
“The beauty or uncomeliness of many things, in good and ill breeding, will be better learnt, and make deeper impressions on them, in the examples of others, than from any rules or instructions can be given about them.”
“Whatever is in any way beautiful hath its source of beauty in itself, and is complete in itself; praise forms no part of it. So it is none the worse nor the better for being praised.”