“Art is beauty, the perpetual invention of detail, the choice of words, the exquisite care of execution.” —Théophile Gautier

If it’s true beauty is more than skin-deep
Is it in fat’s, muscle’s, nerve’s, or bone’s keep
Does beauty through the human form seep
Pooling deep as dreams in duvets of sleep

The human soul needs actual beauty more than bread

―D. H. Lawrence

If beauty is truth does matter matter
Might mass and gravity thinly scatter
Nature’s love bumps and outies lie flatter
In spas and salons skeletons chatter

A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness

―John Keats

In a Creation tale Greek gods bestow
The human form from clumps of clay is grown
Shaped of matter that Prometheus molds
So the Titan’s beauty his models own

Let us live for the beauty of our own reality

―Charles Lamb

Less may be more in lean aesthetic themes
And yet generous seems Creation’s scheme
Like mountains and canyons broad in the beam
Beauty’s grandeur bows in the skin of dreams

A bare assertion is not necessarily the naked truth

―George Dennison Prentice