Say Something Beautiful Quotes

“Did you ever, in that wonderland wilderness of adolesence [sic] ever, quite unexpectedly, see something, a dusk sky, a wild bird, a landscape, so exquisite terror touched you at the bone? And you are afraid, terribly afraid the smallest movement, a leaf, say, turning in the wind, will shatter all? That is, I think, the way love is, or should be: one lives in beautiful terror.”

— Truman Capote

“A friend is more than a therapist or confessor, even though a friend can sometimes heal us and offer us God's forgiveness. A friend is that other person with whom we can share our solitude, our silence, and our prayer. A friend is that other person with whom we can look at a tree and say, "Isn't that beautiful," or sit on the beach and silently watch the sun disappear under the horizon. With a friend we don't have to say or do something special. With a friend we can be still and know that God is there with both of us.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

“Because she was looking down and focusing her attention so precisely, Alice lost track of time and of herself. She wouldn't be able to put it into words, except to say she felt removed from the world. Or just at its edge. At the edge of the wild and beautiful world. She felt small, too. But part of something large. She was happy.”

— Kevin Henkes

“It's like, it doesn't honor God to pretend like everything is OK. That's the beauty of Jesus that so many people miss. The beauty is that he died on the cross for our sins, but also that he existed the way we exist. He understands what it's like to lose a friend. He's not unfamiliar with those emotions. He's not unfamiliar with the difficulty of human life. To me that's what makes Jesus as God beautiful. He totally understands. He went out of his way to prove to us that he understands our situation. So when he has something to say, it's not coming from this high and lofty standpoint. It's coming from this person who understands intricately the perils of human existence.”

— John Mark McMillan

“His intelligence was just something he'd been born with. Luck of the draw, like being beautiful. It was a rationalization to say that he'd worked hard. It was like being given a fine knife and taking the trouble to polish and sharpen it: it's great that you make the effort, but someone had to give you the knife.”

— Adelle Waldman

“They say there's nothing inside but emptiness,' Maureen told me later. I made no comment, but filled in by kissing her hair or something of the kind. Maureen had at that time rather droopy hair, possibly owing to lack of vitamins during the war, which she kept off her brow with a big tortoiseshell slide. Her brow was really beautiful, and so were her eyes. They had that gentle look of being unequal to life, which, as I later realised, always attracts me in a woman.”

— Robert Aickman

“He wanted to say something beautiful, I think.”

— John Steinbeck

“Yeah. She's still just observing though. She's too useless to even carry plates at the moment, so please just think of her as some Russian ornament."
Tom laughed at the owner's blunt response, and asked another question.
"Chief, how do I say something like, 'you're beautiful', in Russian?"
" ... 'Vi ocharovatelny'."
"Err ... Bee, acherabatennen."
However, hearing this, the Caucasian woman looked confused at Tom, and spoke to the owner behind the counter.
" ... What is this man saying? It is unintelligible. I question its relation to the Japanese language."
With a bitter smile, the owner turned his head towards the woman, and spoke to her.
"'Vi ocharovatelny'."
" ... Why do you suddenly speak these social compliments? Please concisely explain your reasoning."
"That's what that young man over there just tried to say to you."
"In which language, exactly?"
Listening to their conversation,”

— Ryohgo Narita

“In the end, therefore, money will be the one thing people will desire, which is moreover only representative, an abstraction. Nowadays a young man hardly envies anyone his gifts, his art, the love of a beautiful girl, or his fame; he only envies him his money. Give me money, he will say, and I am saved ... He would die with nothing to reproach himself with, and under the impression that if only he had had the money he might really have lived and might even have achieved something great.”

— Søren Kierkegaard

“When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act like a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with it's path high above, and it's two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of a gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

— Hayley Williams

“So you should accept knowledge as if you were hearing something you already knew. But this does not mean to receive various pieces of information merely as an echo of your own opinions. It means that you should not be surprised at whatever you see or hear. If you receive things just as an echo of yourself, you do not really see them, you do not fully accept them as they are. So when we say, "Rozan is famous for its misty, rainy days," it does not mean to appreciate this sight by recollecting some scenery we have seen before: "It is not so wonderful. I have seen that sight before." Or "I have painted much more beautiful paintings! Rozan is nothing!" This is not our way. If you are ready to accept things as they are, you will receive them as old friends, even though you appreciate them with new feeling.”

— Shunryu Suzuki

“Today the tower's flock, the usual birds, flew in a kind of scatter pattern, their paths intricately chaotic, the bunch parting and interweaving like boiling pasta under a pot's lifted lid. It appeared someone had given the birds new instructions, had whispered that there was something to avoid, or someone to fool. I once heard Perkus Tooth say that he'd woken that morning having dreamed an enigmatic sentence: "Paranoia is a flower in the brain." Perkus offered this, then smirked and bugged his eyes
the ordinary eye, and the other. I played at amazement (I was amazed, anyway, at the fact that Perkus dreamed sentences to begin with). Yet I hadn't understood what the words meant to him until now, when I knew for a crucial instant that the birds had been directed to deceive me. That was when I saw the brain's flower. Perkus had, I think, been trying to prepare me for how beautiful it was.”

— Jonathan Lethem

“The Rival
If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.
Both of you are great light borrowers.
Her O-mouth grieves at the world; yours is unaffected,
And your first gift is making stone out of everything.
I wake to a mausoleum; you are here,
Ticking your fingers on the marble table, looking for cigarettes,
Spiteful as a woman, but not so nervous,
And dying to say something unanswerable.
The moon, too, abuses her subjects,
But in the daytime she is ridiculous.
Your dissatisfactions, on the other hand,
Arrive through the mailslot with loving regularity,
White and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide.
No day is safe from news of you,
Walking about in Africa maybe, but thinking of me.”

— Sylvia Plath

“Mr. Clark," she repeated, looking up at him. "You are very tall."
"And you," he said in a low voice, "you, my most maddeningly beautiful, brilliant, Free. You are perfectly sized. If you Mr. Clark me once more, I shall be forced to do something dreadful, something like kiss you in public."
Even her wildest fantasies had not had him saying something like that on arrival. She squeezed his hands and then looked up into his dark eyes.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Clark," she said. "What did you say, Mr. Clark? Mr. Clark, I fear that I have become rather hard of hearing. The noise of the press is terribly distracting. What was that you said you'd do if I called you Mr. Clark?”

— Courtney Milan

“I had my hands on you last night, my mouth, and everything I touched was delicate, beautiful. Something I want to keep safe. That's the way I'm built, and I won't apologize for that, but I will apologize for it making me say something that stupid.”

— Joey W. Hill

“It's my practice to welcome new people to the church by making sure they know that House for All Sinners and Saints will, at some point, let them down. That I will say or do something stupid and disappoint them. And then I encourage them to decide before that happens if they will stick around after it happens. If they leave, I tell them, they will miss the way that God's grace comes in and fills in the cracks left behind by our brokenness. And that's too beautiful to miss.”

— Nadia Bolz-Weber

“Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.”

— Albert Schweitzer

“Beauty is not something you can count on. Usually, when people say you are beautiful, it is when there is a harmony between the inside and the outside.”

— Emmanuelle Beart

“You really can't say enough about 'Blade Runner.' For that movie to have such a long life - you can't describe what a beautiful feeling that is. Initially, the movie was out of theaters in something like two weeks. But the people that wanted it back - the fans - they really saved it.”

— Rutger Hauer

“She came quickly over to me and held out her hand. I looked at her full of distrust. Was she doing this freely, with a light heart? Or was she doing it just to get rid of me? She put her arm around my neck, tears in her eyes. I just stood and looked at her. She offered me her mouth but I couldn't believe her, it was bound to be a sacrifice on her part, a means of getting it over with.
She said something, it sounded to me like "I love you anyway!" She said it very softly and indistinctly, I may not have heard it correctly, perhaps she didn't say exactly those words. But she threw herself passionately on my neck, held both arms around my neck a little while, even raised herself on tiptoe to reach well up, and stood thus.
Afraid that she was forcing herself to show me this tenderness, I merely said "How beautiful you are now!"
That was all I said. I stepped back, bumped against the door and walked out backward. She was left standing inside.”

— Knut Hamsun

“It could have been so beautiful.
The way our elbows always collide and not a single word was needed to make each other laugh. I laughed at your existence, I said, and you laughed even harder and that's how we spent our time.
It could have been so beautiful
the way the first hit felt good and something to deserve
because I've read every psychology book you can find on human behaviour and know for a fact that anger grows from caring
too much
and so it was a privilege to be in the war zone with someone like you.
How much you must have cared to hit that well
and that hard
and I remember saying thank you
and I'm sorry
at the same time
because what else is there to say.”

— Charlotte Eriksson

“It is good to say something beautiful; it is even better to say something right; but saying a right thing beautifully, that is the best!”

— Mehmet Murat Ildan

“Some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, 'I've never seen anyone run like that before.' It's more than just a race, it's a style. It's doing something better than anyone else. It's being creative.”

— Steve Prefontaine

“Why did they all have to tread so very delicately around Celeste's money? It was like wealth was an embarrassing medical condition. It was the same with Celeste's beauty. Strangers gave Celeste the same furtive looks they gave to people with missing limbs, and if Madeline ever mentioned Celeste's looks, Celeste responded with something like shame. "Shhh," she'd say, looking around fearfully in case someone overheard. Everyone wanted to be rich and beautiful, but the truly rich and beautiful had to pretend they were just the same as everyone else. Oh, it was a funny old world.”

— Liane Moriarty

“You want to hear something really sad?' I whisper. 'You're my best friend.'
'You're right. That is really sad.' Oliver grins.
'That's not what I meant.'
'Are we still playing True Confessions?' he asks.
'Is that what we're doing?'
He reaches toward me and rubs a strand of my hair between his fingers. 'I think you're beautiful,' Oliver says. 'Inside and out.'
He leans forward from the tiniest bit and breathes in, closing his eyes, before he lets the hair fall back against my cheek. I feel it inside me, as if I've been shocked.
I don't pull away.
I don't want to pull away.
'I ... I don't know what to say,' I stammer.
Oliver's eyes light up. 'Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walk into mine,' he quotes. He moves slowly, so that I know what's coming, and kisses me.”

— Jodi Picoult

“Many people under the influence of science, and particularly neuro-nonsense, will say the sacred is an old concept, it's just a hangover, but you can easily see that's not so, because everyone has a sense of desecration: there are things everybody values which, when they are spoiled are not just moved or destroyed, they are desecrated. Something that is vital not just to you but the world. People have this sense when they see their towns pulled apart and concrete blocks put in the middle of them. You only have to look at Aberdeen to see what happens to a beautiful place when the desecrators get their hands on it.”

— Roger Scruton

“I believe God is everything, say Shug. Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you've found It. Shug a beautiful something,”

— Alice Walker

“I feel such a creative force in me: I am convinced that there will be a time when, let us say, I will make something good every day , on a regular basis ... I am doing my very best to make every effort because I am longing so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things mean painstaking work, disappointment, and perseverance.”

— Vincent Van Gogh

“Does a flower really have beauty?
Does a fruit really have beauty?
No: they have only color and form
And existence.
Beauty is the name of something that doesn't exist
But that I give to things in exchange for the pleasure they
give me.
It means nothing.
So why do I say about things: they're beautiful?”

— Fernando Pessoa

“It's a beautiful religion and I wish I understood it more. No, I don't want to understand it all. It's beautiful because it's always a mystery. Sometimes I say I don't believe in God and Jesus and Mary. I'm a bad Catholic because I miss mass once in a while and I grumble when, at confession, I get a heavy penance for something I couldn't help doing. But good or bad, I am a Catholic and I'll never be anything else.
Of course, I didn't ask to be born Catholic, no more than I asked to be born American. But I'm glad it turned out that I'm both these things.”

— Betty Smith

“Spin is 'something is beautiful because we say it's beautiful.'”

— Junot Diaz

“I can't say what made me fall in love with Vietnam - that a woman's voice can drug you; that everything is so intense. The colors, the taste, even the rain. Nothing like the filthy rain in London. They say whatever you're looking for, you will find here. They say you come to Vietnam and you understand a lot in a few minutes, but the rest has got to be lived. The smell: that's the first thing that hits you, promising everything in exchange for your soul. And the heat. Your shirt is straightaway a rag. You can hardly remember your name, or what you came to escape from. But at night, there's a breeze. The river is beautiful. You could be forgiven for thinking there was no war; that the gunshots were fireworks; that only pleasure matters. A pipe of opium, or the touch of a girl who might tell you she loves you. And then, something happens, as you knew it would. And nothing can ever be the same again.”

— Graham Greene

“You know how you can think you know someone or think you know them but maybe you only know them one way?" He sneaks a glance at me and I notice that his cheeks are red in the moonlight. "Maybe you know someone as your little sister's friend," he says. "And then maybe something shifts. Maybe one day you hear them say something unexpected. Or hear the way they laugh and then suddenly you see them all over again. Like this time it's different. This time maybe you see them as ... " He pauses. "Beautiful," he finishes. Catcher leans in closer. "Wonderful and funny.”

— Carrie Ryan

“Today 5:14 p.m.
"Mrrrrrowl. Mrrrrrowl."
"Ow! Ow, stupid cat! Ahem. You told me, 'stop calling, Isabelle,' but I'm not the one calling you. Church is calling you. Mine are merely the fingers that work the phone.
"See, here's something you may not have known before you committed your recent rash acts. Our cat, Church, and your cat, Chairman Meow? They're in love. I've never seen such love before. I never knew such love could exist in the heart of a ... cat. Some people say that love between two dude cats is wrong, but I think it's beautiful. Love makes Church happier than I've ever seen him. Nothing makes him happy like Chairman Meow. Not tuna. Not shredding centuries-old tapestries. Nothing. Please don't keep these cats apart. Please don't take the joy of love away from Church.
"Look, this is really just a warning for your own good. If you keep Church and Chairman Meow apart, Church will start to get angry.
"You wouldn't like Church when he's angry."
Beep”

— Cassandra Clare

“Tom laughed at the owner's blunt response, and asked another question.
"Chief, how do I say something like, 'you're beautiful', in Russian?"
" ... 'Vi ocharovatelny'."
"Err ... Bee, acherabatennen."
However, hearing this, the Caucasian woman looked confused at Tom, and spoke to the owner behind the counter.
" ... What is this man saying? It is unintelligible. I question its relation to the Japanese language."
With a bitter smile, the owner turned his head towards the woman, and spoke to her.
"'Vi ocharovatelny'."
" ... Why do you suddenly speak these social compliments? Please concisely explain your reasoning."
"That's what that young man over there just tried to say to you."
"In which language, exactly?”

— Ryohgo Narita

“It was only when we brought Will back home, once the annex was adapted and ready, that I could see a point in making it beautiful again. I needed to give my son something to look at. I needed to tell him, silently, that things might change, grow, or fail, but that life did go on. That we were all part of some great cycle, some pattern that it was only God's purpose to understand. I couldn't say that to him, of course-Will and I have never been able to say much to each other-but I wanted to show him. A silent promise, if you like, that there was a bigger picture, a brighter future.”

— Jojo Moyes

“We love films because they make us feel something. They speak to our desires, which are never small. They allow us to escape and to dream and to gaze into eyes that are impossibly beautiful and huge. They fill us with longing. But also. They tell us to remember; they remind us of life. Remember, they say, how much it hurts to have your heart broken. Remember about death and suffering and the complexities of living. Remember what it is like to love someone. Remember how it is to be loved. Remember what you feel in this moment. Remember this. Remember this.”

— Nina LaCour

“It is not enough to say that something good, something beautiful is being born. We must help it become a reality - not a dream.”

— Ella Reeve Bloor

“There will be something anguish or elation that is peculiar to this day alone. I rise from sleep and say: hail to the morning! come down to me, my beautiful unknown.”

— Jessica Powers

“I know that a lot of songwriters write about a break up. It's a really popular topic. I think heartbreak is the number one thing people write about. I could say that's narcissistic somehow because they want everybody to admire how pained they are. But I actually do think there's something beautiful and uplifting about knowing that you're not the only one who is experiencing or has experienced that kind of devastating loss. Everyone's experienced that.”

— Mirah

“In short, [Coltrane's] tone is beautiful because it is functional. In other words, it is always involved in saying something. You can't separate the means that a man uses to say something from what he ultimately says. Technique is not separated from its content in a great artist.”

— Cecil Taylor

“I felt a combination of happiness and humility [ to People Magazine's 100 Most Beautiful People ]. At the same time there's a lot of pressure, because people can approach you whose intentions aren't in the best place, and they can say things that are very hurtful. And on one of those days when you wake up and you just go and get your coffee without worrying about looking your best, you make yourself vulnerable to someone who'd say something like, "You look awful for being on the Top 100 list."”

— Zoe Saldana

“I'm not fascinated by people who smile all the time. What I find interesting is the way people look when they are lost in thought, when their face becomes angry or serious, when they bite their lip, the way they glance, the way they look down when they walk, when they are alone and smoking a cigarette, when they smirk, the way they half smile, the way they try and hold back tears, the way when their face says they want to say something but can't, the way they look at someone they want or love ... I love the way people look when they do these things. It's ... beautiful.”

— Clemence Poesy

“I believe that ... my first successes in my out-of-focus pictures were a fluke. That is to say, that when focusing and coming to something which, to my eye, was very beautiful, I stopped there instead of screwing on the lens to the more definite focus which all other photographers insist upon ...”

— Julia Margaret Cameron

“If you're feeling alone, and your weariness has grown, look up above, and thank God for His love. There's nothing you can do, to change His love for you; hold on friend, it's not the end. Something beautiful will come, the clouds will part for the sun, the skies will break for the Son, and the Father will say 'Well done.' But until then, until then, you're not alone. He can make bread from stone. Hold on to Him, and He'll hold on to you. Take one day at a time, pray for faith and be kind, and when forgetful becomes your mind, remember what He said, 'You are mine.'”

— Nick Vujicic

“It's such a frustration when you see in the name of religion, in the name of God, what people are doing is something we never expected. The religion has to be Spirit-oriented, but it is only power-oriented or money-oriented. In the original scriptures, or we can say in the origin of this religion was the truth. And all these religions bloom on the same play of spirituality like beautiful flowers at different times, but people have plucked it and now they are fighting with the dead flowers.”

— Nirmala Srivastava

“A church is something very beautiful. It is nice when people feel happy in it. But I am not a religious man. Look at us, and then at the infinity of space. We are rather small insignificant creatures, wouldn't you say?”

— Oscar Niemeyer

“The experience of beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say. The artist's relation to the object of beauty, how the art makes that happen, is a whole other subject. Beauty is an event. Beauty is something that happens. There is no such thing as a beautiful object or a beautiful woman.”

— Peter Schjeldahl

“For the consumer, fashion is fashion. You can buy something beautiful for $20 and you can buy something ugly for $1,000. It comes down to style. As far as the industry as a whole, it is hard to say. I don't like to separate the worlds.”

— Kelly Cutrone