Quotessence
Home / Topics / Ugliness Quotes

Ugliness Quotes

Browse 463 quotes about Ugliness.

Related topics

UglyWorldIfsBeautifulPeopleMenBeautyFacesHumansThinkingEvilKnowsLooksArtMadePersonsHatePainWantGivingMaySinVirtueAmericaArt IsHas BeensMindOrderTogetherCertainEyeHeartLyingMeanSeeingShouldWarWayBodyChildrenEnoughFactsFlowerFoundImportantLightPerfectPovertyRealSometimesSoulTryingViolenceWhole

Ugliness Quotes

“People acted how they looked like. The reactions of the world to one’s appearance were an invisible estimation of one’s perception of themselves. The beautiful and the hideous each got treated a certain way—experiencing wildly different kinds of years. The beautiful were told phrases the hideous never heard. The beautiful struggled more with envy, while the hideous spent more time practicing courage, for things never easily bent their way. Every person accepted how they were treated and sank into that role. It showed in the way they sat. How their heads turn. When they spoke. If they spoke. Mannerisms were then not a matter of individual personality, but collective decree. Andrei would notice in a stranger all the things their body did, memorize them, and project them imaginarily on a different person. The imagined transference would never work! It seemed odd, like a miscalculation, to visualize a gorgeous Adonis walk with his head down and fidgety fingers the way a shy man did. There was undeniably a pattern of traits between strangers, courtesy of the strangers they meet.”

PeoplePhilosophyBeautyCourageSocietyPerceptionAppearanceUgliness
Book:A Happy Ghost
Create image

“Nothing humbles a beautiful woman better than not being wanted by a man whose girlfriend or wife is ugly (or not as beautiful as she is).”

MenWantLoveHumorWantedFunnyBeautifulDesireBeautyWifeHumourProudHusbandJokesShameHumbleUglyLustManGirlfriendArroganceSatireAphorismArrogantModestJokeHumiliationUglinessRespectfulBoyfriendAphorismsLikeDegradeMeekSubmissiveHumiliateAphoristAphoristsWivesHusbandsSelf DeprecatingGirlfriendsBoyfriendsOverbearingUnassumingLowerDiffidentDemeanSubduedSelf EffacingAbaseDeferentialDeflateCut Down To SizeLust ForAbashChastenedDebaseMake Eat CrowMake Eat Humble PieMortifySettle Someone S HashTake Down A Peg Or TwoUnassertive Unpresuming
Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Create image

“I tak samo jak ojciec, dziad i pradziad będzie kiedyś harować jak wół na tym nędznym skrawku ziemi leżącej nad ciemnym morzem, a potem umrze jak zwierzę. Lecz Chrystus nie umarł za pięknych i dobrych. Łatwo jest umierać za pięknych i dobrych, trudno za nędznych i znieprawionych - zrozumiałem to jasno w tamtej chwili.”

ChristBeautyDyingUgliness
Book:Novels by Shusaku Endo: Silence, Deep River, Wonderful Fool, Scandal
Create image

“A man, perhaps an inch shorter than Andrei, sensing the height comparison, slowly passed him. The stranger still wore an N-95 mask. The pandemic ended three years ago, but Andrei identified why masks were still worn by others. While millions had died from COVID-19, others silently and ashamedly rejoiced in the virus’ demands. The requirement of face masks made it mandatory for everyone to cover more than half of their face. And for those who disliked their face, they, for nearly two years, had the chance to go out in the world and not be ugly for once. Suddenly, while they were not beautiful, they were not hideous. Neutrality can do so much for someone. This period was like a gift for those with horrid teeth, large features, cystic acne, injuries, scarring, and discoloration. Never before were so many people looked straight in the eyes. Masks were some people’s only chance to show who they were. And now, when the pandemic had ended, they were back in the shadows. Large groups of people, however, as Andrei had seen, still wore them, beneath the excuse that the virus could still return. "I would love to kiss one of you on the cheek, he thought.”

SadnessSocietyLonelinessUglyIsolationCovid 19PandemicUglinessCovidFace Masks
Book:A Happy Ghost
Create image

“He clutched the handle of the knife with the same strength the gang members used to kick him. He was worthless, like a crumpled bit of trash thrown, but not worth picking up, that doesn’t even deserve a courteous foot nudge to hide. He was unseen, like the skin beneath the toga of a female statue made of stone. He was ugly, like the damaged face of the deformed stranger you try not to look at because you don’t want it in your memory. He was as soft as the pull-tab of a soda can, as easily broken as a straw wrapper, and as close to death as a baby slug crawling next to a group of kids at summer camp.”

PainSadnessLonelinessDepressionVulnerabilityIsolationUglinessAlienationSad QuotesThe Goodbye Song
Book:The Goodbye Song
Create image

“My skin yields acne in double digits—a mountainous domain of genetic misfortune. Sometimes in the morning, the pimples get so bad that if I rinse my face towards the showerhead, the water breaks the pustule and I start to bleed. So I shower the same way I behave in public: with my head down. At bedtime, I get stiff because as soon as I turn to one side and sleep, I’ll wake up with a bloody pillowcase.”

PainSadnessLonelinessHumiliationUglinessAlienationThe Goodbye SongPimplesAcne
Book:The Goodbye Song
Create image

“Beauty! Wasn't that what mattered? Beauty was hardly a popular ideal at that jumpy moment in history. The masses had been desensitized to it, the intelligentsia regarded it with suspicion. To most of her peers, 'beauty' smacked of the rarefied, the indulgent, the superfluous, the effete. How could persons of good conscience pursue the beautiful when there was so much suffering and injustice in the world? Ellen Cherry's answer was that if one didn't cultivate beauty, soon he or she wouldn't be able to recognize ugliness. The prevalence of social ugliness made commitment to physical beauty all the more essential. And the very presence in life of double-wide mobile homes, Magic Marker graffiti, and orange shag carpeting had the effect of making ills such as poverty, crime, repression, pollution, and child abuse seem tolerable. In a sense, beauty was the ultimate protest, and, in that it generally lasted longer than an orgasm, the ultimate refuge. The Venus de Milo screamed 'No!' at evil, whereas the Spandex stretch pant, the macrame plant holder were compliant with it. Ugly bedrooms bred ugly habits. Of course, it wasn't required of beauty that it perform a social function. That was what was valuable about it.”

ArtBeautyUglinessSocial Injustice
Book:Skinny Legs and All
Create image

“This theory of beauty is not developed with respect to artefacts alone, but universally. It is independent of taste, for it is recognized that as Augustine says, there are those who take pleasure in deformities. The word deformity is significant here, because it is precisely a formal beauty that is in question; and we must not forget that "formal" includes the connotation "formative." The recognition of beauty depends on judgment, not on sensation; the beauty of the æsthetic surfaces depending on their information, and not upon themselves, Everything, whether natural or artificial, is beautiful to the extent that it really is what it purports to be, and independently of all comparisons; or ugly to the extent that its own form is not expressed and realized in its tangible actuality. The work of art is beautiful, accordingly, in terms of perfection, or truth and aptitude as defined above; whatever is inept or vague cannot be considered beautiful, however it may be valued by those who "know what they like.”

ArtNatureQualityBeautyTasteCriticismUglinessAestheticsForms
Book:Christian & Oriental Philosophy of Art Formerly: "Why Exhibit Works of Art?"
Create image

“Beautiful is he who recognizes what is truly beautiful, Even if the surface is ugly. Truthful is he who says what is true, Even if the truth is ugly. Ugly is he who measures beauty by its exterior, Without first weighing the interior. And ugly is the man who judges harshly what he sees looking out, Without first judging what he sees in the mirror. Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun (2010)”

LoveLifeWisdomTruthBeautifulPoetryAttitudeBeautySelf LoveRateUglySurfaceTrueBitternessTruthfulUglinessInner BeautyMirrorJudgeExteriorSuzy KassemTruth LoveBeautiful HeartMeasureInteriorExternalInner Love
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Create image

“Therese's lips opened to speak, but her mind was too far away. Her mind was at a distant point, at a distant vortex that opened on the scene in the dimly lighted, terrifying room where the two of them seemed to stand in desperate combat. And at the point of the vortex where her mind was, she knew it was the hopelessness that terrified her and nothing else. It was the hopelessness of Mrs. Robichek's ailing body and her job at the store, of her stack of dresses in the trunk, of her ugliness, the hopelessness of which the end of her life was entirely composed. And the hopelessness of herself, of ever being the person she wanted to be and of doing the things that person would do. Had all her life been nothing but a dream, and was this real? It was the terror of this hopelessness that made her want to shed the dress and flee before it was too late, before the chains fell around her and locked.”

LifeMindTerrorChainsLockedHopelessnessUglinessVortex
Book:The Price of Salt
Create image

“To be beautiful, handsome, means that you possess a power which makes all smile upon and welcome you; that everybody is impressed in your favor and inclined to be of your opinion; that you have only to pass through a street or to show yourself at a balcony to make friends and to win mistresses from among those who look upon you. What a splendid, what a magnificent gift is that which spares you the need to be amiable in order to be loved, which relieves you of the need of being clever and ready to serve, which you must be if ugly, and enables you to dispense with the innumerable moral qualities which you must possess in order to make up for the lack of personal beauty.”

BeautyUgliness
Book:Mademoiselle de Maupin
Create image

“Her eyes, always sad, now looked into the mirror with particular hopelessness. "She's flattering me," thought the princess, and she turned away and went on reading. Julie, however, was not flattering her friend: indeed, the princess's eyes, large, deep, and luminous (sometimes it was as if rays of light came from them in sheaves), were so beautiful that very often, despite the unattractiveness of the whole face, those eyes were more attractive than beauty. But the princess had never seen the good expression of thise eyes, the expression they had in moments when she was not thinking of herself. As with all people, the moment she looked in the mirror, her face assumed a strained, unnatural, bad expression.”

BeautyUglinessUnattractiveness
Book:War and Peace
Create image

“At that moment the universe appeared to me a vast machine constructed only to produce evil. I almost doubted the goodness of God, in not annihilating man on the day he first sinned. "The world should have been destroyed," I said, "crushed as I crush this reptile which has done nothing in its life but render all that it touches as disgusting as itself." I had scarcely removed my foot from the poor insect when, like a censoring angel sent from heaven, there came fluttering through the trees a butterfly with large wings of lustrous gold and purple. It shone but a moment before my eyes; then, rising among the leaves, it vanished into the height of the azure vault. I was mute, but an inner voice said to me, "Let not the creature judge his Creator; here is a symbol of the world to come. As the ugly caterpillar is the origin of the splendid butterfly, so this globe is the embryo of a new heaven and a new earth whose poorest beauty will infinitely exceed your mortal imagination. And when you see the magnificent result of that which seems so base to you now, how you will scorn your blind presumption, in accusing Omniscience for not having made nature perish in her infancy. God is the god of justice and mercy; then surely, every grief that he inflicts on his creatures, be they human or animal, rational or irrational, every suffering of our unhappy nature is only a seed of that divine harvest which will be gathered when, Sin having spent its last drop of venom, Death having launched its final shaft, both will perish on the pyre of a universe in flames and leave their ancient victims to an eternal empire of happiness and glory.”

WorldBeautyFuturePerfectionImperfectionUgliness
Book:Devoirs de Bruxelles
Create image

“The truth is I was addicted to being beautiful, and that’s not something you just walk away from. Being addicted to all that attention, I had to quit cold turkey. I could shave my head, but hair grows back. Even bald, I might still look too good. Bald, I might get even more attention. There was the option of getting fat or drinking out of control to ruin my looks, but I wanted to be ugly, and I wanted my health. Wrinkles and aging looked too far off. There had to be some way to get ugly in a flash. I had to deal with my looks in a fast, permanent way or I’d always be tempted to go back.”

BeautyHealthUglinessOldFatBald
Book:Invisible Monsters
Create image