research on beauty (working)
A collection of words I find over time about beauty. I think, to me, and I’ve tried to express what I think of beauty many times and it always comes out too passionate and a bit scattered. But to me - I think that beauty is nothing more than the honesty a person has when they move through the world. In the way they talk, how they treat people, what they watch listen to - how they love. It’s not about the content either, it’s truly how honest they are with themselves and the world around them.
The most beautiful things in this life require so much vulnerability to the point of being almost bare to the world. Which is hard when it’s not the safest place to do so. I think those people who can get to that point understand that all of the protection they need is really in the strength of knowing themselves. I cry when I interact with beautiful things and people because I think that it reminds me how special everything in this life is. I feel less sad about what could be going wrong in my life and more about how blessed I am to be able to be here and have these feelings. Whatever kind of feeling, rejection, confusion, happiness, being drunk, crying, flying in an airplane. All of these things are just the most incredible things simply because there’s the opportunity for all of them. I don’t know. It’s 11PM on a very dreary day in New York City and I’ve been low for weeks now. But I feel lucky to even be feeling this way right now. It’s pretty beautiful.
“Beauty is a willing loss of mental control, surrendered to organic process that is momentarily under the direction of an exterior object. The object is not thought and felt about, exactly. It seems to use my capacities to think and feel itself.”
― Peter Schjeldahl
“Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.”
-James Thurber
“As if you were on fire from within.
The moon lives in the lining of your skin.”
― Pablo Neruda
“I keep remembering one of my Guru's teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't you will eat away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
“To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves-there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.”
-Joan Didion
“For as long as I can remember, this has been one of my favorite feelings. To be alone in public, wandering at night, or lying close to the earth, anonymous, invisible, floating. To make your claim on public space even as you feel yourself disappearing into its largess, into its sublimity. To practice death by feeling completely empty, but somehow alive.”
-Maggie Nelson, The Red Parts
“Sometimes, I don’t mean to be so public but it’s hard for me to separate my life and my work. They’re both one and the same, and both are important to who I am and how I express myself.”
-Maryam Nassir Zadeh
“When you know you are infinite, you know all you need to know, whenever you need to know it.
The timing is ordained by the cosmic clockworks and how fast you learn. That is to say; how quickly you catch self-destructive patterns which you can consciously release, while stating their clear intent of benevolence.
Trust and know that your intent is your compass of life. The quantum winds will take you there. All that is required of you is to hold your compass and keep it pointed at the most benevolent outcome for the entire universe.
Think on an infinite scale, there is nothing else but what is powering your heart.”
-Sejeluho
“This morning I sit, a body of heat and weighted blood, reminding myself to remember myself. I am forever making history. When I try to do things I used to do, they no longer feel right. When I try to slip back into the places I used to squeeze myself, it’s far too uncomfortable. This is what happens when life grows, and life can only grow. We lose the ability to pretend. Once you know it, you can’t unknow it. Nor can you carry on as though nothing has changed. How inconvenient.”
-Yrsa Daley-Ward