But my most favourite pursuit after my daily exertions at the Foundry was Astronomy. There were frequently clear nights when the glorious objects in the Heavens were seen in most attractive beauty and brilliancy.

It is curious how from time immemorial man seems to have associated the idea of evil with beauty shrunk from it with a sort of ghostly fear while at the same time drawn to it by force of its hypnotic attraction.

What is important then is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect but a certain kind of temperament the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects.

Many attempts have been made by writers on art and poetry to define beauty in the abstract to express it in the most general terms to find some universal formula for it.

I believe that history has shape order and meaning that exceptional men as much as economic forces produce change and that passe abstractions like beauty nobility and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.

Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.

Beauty attracts us men but if like an armed magnet it is pointed beside with gold and silver it attracts with tenfold power.

Abstraction brings the world into more complex variable relations it can extract beauty alternative topographies ugliness and intense actualities from seeming nothingness.

Vampires have always held a very seductive kind of lore and have always been some variety of attractive whether it's attractiveness that's born of just the physical attributes that they have - this kind of ethereal beauty or translucent pallor - or whether it is more to do with the way they carry themselves.

Wisdom is the abstract of the past but beauty is the promise of the future.