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I am haunted by the
song "A Thousand Beautiful Things" from Annie Lennox's latest CD, Bare. It
has a hold on me the way a perfect song will, where not only do you listen
to it constantly, but you also find the silence upon awakening is replaced
with the refrain in your head, where you find your mind mulling over the
rest of the lyrics the rest of the day.
The song begins,
"Every day I write the
list
Of reasons why I still believe they do exist
(a thousand beautiful
things)
And even though it's hard to see
The glass is full and not half empty
(a thousand beautiful things)
So... light me up like the sun
To cool down with your rain
I never want to close my eyes again
Never close my eyes
Never close my eyes"
A thousand times a
thousand beautiful things and then some. . . there is beauty in the world,
and where there is beauty, there is spirit. To live our lives surrounded
by beauty, all we have to do is never close our eyes.
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ewf
If you love a being for the beauty you love none other than God, for he is
the Beautiful Being.
--Ibn Al-Arabi
Whenever I experience something beautiful, I am with Soul. That moment of
inward breath, that pause and awareness of "how beautiful this is" is a
prayer of appreciation, a moment of gratitude in which I beheld beauty and
am one with it. I have come to appreciate that having an aesthetic eye
takes me effortlessly into soul.
--Jean Shinoda Bolen
In all ranks of life the human heart yearns for the beautiful; and the
beautiful things that God makes are his gift to all alike.
--Harriet Beecher Stowe
Beauty is reality seen with the eyes of love.
--Evelyn Underhill
Beauty will save the world.
--Fydor Dosteovsky
Beauty is one of the rare things that do not lead to doubt of God.
--Jean Anouilh
A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine
picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not
obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human
soul. Beauty is an all-pervading presence. It unfolds to the numberless
flowers of the Spring; it waves in the branches of the trees and in the
green blades of grass; it haunts the depths of the earth and the sea, and
gleams out in the hues of the shell and the precious stone.
And not only these minute objects, but the ocean, the mountains, the
clouds, the heavens, the stars, the rising and the setting sun all
overflow with beauty. The universe is its temple; and those people who are
alive to it can not lift their eyes without feeling themselves encompassed
with it on every side.
Now, this beauty is so precious, the enjoyment it gives so refined and
pure, so congenial without tenderest and noblest feelings, and so akin to
worship, that it is painful to think of the multitude of people as living
in the midst of it, and living almost as blind to it as if, instead of
this fair earth and glorious sky, they were tenants of a dungeon.
--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Soul is born in beauty, and feeds on beauty and requires beauty for its
life.
--Ronald Schenk
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
--Kahlil Gibran
Beauty is an omnipresence of death and loveliness, a smiling sadness that
we discern in nature and all things, a mystic communion that the poet
feels.
--Charlie Chaplin
What a strange power the perception of beauty is! It seems to ebb and flow
like some secret tide, independent alike of health and disease, of joy or
sorrow. There are times in our lives when we seem to go singing on our
way, and when the beauty of the world sets itself like a quiet harmony to
the song we uplift.
--A.C. Benson
There is nothing that makes its way more directly to the soul than beauty.
--Joseph Addison
By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as
by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity.
--Vernon Howard
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful, for beauty
is God's handwriting--a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face,
in every fair sky, in every flower, and thank God for it as a cup of
blessing.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in,
where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.
--John Muir
God scatters beauty as he scatters flowers
O'er the wide earth, and tells us all are ours.
A hundred lights in every temple burn,
And at each shrine I bend my knee in turn.
--Walter Savage Landor
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