I was thinking today of my greatest happiness, a walk along a cliff by the sea, and you at the end of it.

Beauty had this penalty—it came too readily, came too completely. It stilled life—froze it. One forgot the little agitations; the flush, the pallor, some queer distortion, some light or shadow, which made the face unrecognisable for a moment and yet added a quality one saw for ever after. It was simpler to smooth that all out under the cover of beauty.

Was it wisdom? Was it knowledge? Was it, once more, the deceptiveness of beauty, so that all one's perceptions, half way to truth, were tangled in a golden mesh?

The beauty of the world...has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.

No sooner have you feasted on beauty with your eyes than your mind tells you that beauty is vain and beauty passes

I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.

When you are silent you are again beautiful.

For the eye has this strange property: it rests only on beauty.

Lazy and indifferent the heron returns; the sky veils her stars; then bares them