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Quote by F Scott Fitzgerald

“Women said she was still handsome; men said she was pretty no longer. And this was probably because the qualities in her beauty that women had feared and men had followed had vanished.”

Quote by F Scott Fitzgerald

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F Scott Fitzgerald

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“Everyone knows that knowledge does now equal wisdom. You have certainly heard of ways to distinguish one from the other, but there is also something else to consider: Above that what is usually referred to as wisdom, there is more, and it is so rare, or so thoroughly ignored, that language does not even have a word for it! It is a holistic equilibrium of mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Something like that deserves a word, don’t you think? Moreover, it is neither a phantasm nor a pipe dream, but very real and attainable, when you live according to natural intelligence of being. It is time to reclaim certain words, which hold power within the letters they behold, but have been steered away from their original sense and purpose. One such word is Beauty. When wisdom meets insight, they give birth to beauty.”

“What is the Ego? Suppose a man puts himself at a window to see those who pass by. If I pass by, can I say that he placed himself there to see me? No; for he does not think of me in particular. But does he who loves someone on account of beauty really love that person? No; for the small-pox, which will kill beauty without killing the person, will cause him to love her no more. And if one loves me for my judgment, memory, he does not love me, for I can lose these qualities without losing myself. Where, then, is this Ego, if it be neither in the body nor in the soul? And how love the body or the soul, except for these qualities which do not constitute me, since they are perishable? For it is impossible and would be unjust to love the soul of a person in the abstract, and whatever qualities might be therein. We never, then, love a person, but only qualities. Let us, then, jeer no more at those who are honoured on account of rank and office; for we love a person only on account of borrowed qualities.”

“Poetical beauty.—As we speak of poetical beauty, so ought we to speak of mathematical beauty and medical beauty. But we do not do so; and the reason is that we know well what is the object of mathematics, and that it consists in proofs, and what is the object of medicine, and that it consists in healing. But we do not know in what grace consists, which is the object of poetry. We do not know the natural model which we ought to imitate; and through lack of this knowledge, we have coined fantastic terms, "The golden age," "The wonder of our times," "Fatal," etc., and call this jargon poetical beauty. But whoever imagines a woman after this model, which consists in saying little things in big words, will see a pretty girl adorned with mirrors and chains, at whom he will smile; because we know better wherein consists the charm of woman than the charm of verse. But those who are ignorant would admire her in this dress, and there are many villages in which she would be taken for the queen; hence we call sonnets made after this model "Village Queens.”

“There are no beautiful thoughts (he [Flaubert] would say) without beautiful forms, and conversely. As it is impossible to extract from a physical body the qualities which really constitute it—colour, extension, and the like—without reducing it to a hollow abstraction, in a word, without destroying it; just so it is impossible to detach the form from the idea, for the idea only exists by virtue of the form.”