A Quote by Anna Pavlova

It is by the steady elimination of everything which is ugly - thoughts and words no less than tangible objects - and by the substitution of things of true and lasting beauty that the whole progress of humanity proceeds.

Anna Pavlova

Quote Topics

Beauty Elimination Everything Humanity Lasting Less Objects Progress Steady Substitution Tangible Than Things Thoughts Thoughts And Words True Ugly Which Whole Words

Quote Author

Anna Pavlova
Russian - Dancer
January 31, 1882 - January 23, 1931

Fashion is not a real element of beauty in external objects; and to persons who possess a good endowment of Form, Constructiveness and Ideality, intrinsic elegance is much more pleasing and permanently agreeable, than forms of less merit, recommended merely by being new. Hence there is a beauty which never palls, and there are objects over which fashion exercises no control.

George Combe

Physical beauty wasn't the same as True Beauty, any more than pretty ugly meant truly ugly or Magnetic North meant True North.

Justina Chen

The great crime which the moneyed classes and promoters of industry committed in the palmy Victorian days was the condemning of the workers to ugliness, ugliness, ugliness: meanness and formless and ugly surroundings, ugly ideals, ugly religion, ugly hope, ugly love, ugly clothes, ugly furniture, ugly houses, ugly relationship between workers and employers. The human soul needs actual beauty more than bread.

D. H. Lawrence

Thoughts, words, ideas and information, free from any bonds or restrictions, is the very concrete which pours out a foundation strong enough that upon which a house, stable and lasting, of true freedom and liberty may be built.

Derek R. Audette

[K]now that however ugly the parts appear the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand Is an ugly thing, and man dissevered from the earth and stars and his history... for contemplation or in fact... Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness, the greatest beauty is Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe.

Robinson Jeffers

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me." The adage is true as long as you don't really believe the words. But if your whole upbringing, and everything you have ever been told by parents, teachers and priests, has led you to believe, really believe, utterly and completely, that sinners burn in hell (or some other obnoxious article of doctrine such as that a woman is the property of her husband), it is entirely plausible that words could have a more long-lasting and damaging effect than deeds.

Richard Dawkins

What I would argue is that real spirituality is the ability to keep encountering two opposite thoughts at the same time and still maintain some kind of morality and perspective in the world. It is not the elimination of one side of the equation or the elimination of what you don't like; it is the investigation of everything.

Eve Ensler

The best antidote against evils of all kinds, against the evil thoughts that haunt the soul, against the needless perplexities which distract the conscience, is to keep hold of the good we have. Impure thoughts will not stand against pure words and prayers and deeds. Little doubts will not avail against great certainties. Fix your affections on things above, and then you will less and less be troubled by the cares, the temptations, the troubles of things on earth.

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which obtain, but of those who are ethically the best.

Thomas Huxley

If you permit your thoughts to dwell on evil you yourself will become ugly. Look only for the good in everything so you absorb the quality of beauty.

Paramahansa Yogananda

There is in the blind as in the seeing an Absolute which gives truth to what we know to be true, order to what is orderly, beauty to the beautiful, touchableness to what is tangible.

Helen Keller

These glorious things-words-are man's right alone...Without words we should know no more of each other's hearts and thoughts than the dog knows of his fellow dog....for, if you will consider, you always think to yourself in words, though you do not speak them aloud; and without them all our thoughts would be mere blind longings, feelings which we could not understand ourselves.

Charles Kingsley

In the society of men the truth resides now less in what things are than in what they are not. Our social realities are so ugly if seen in the light of exiled truth, and beauty is no longer possible if it is not a lie.

R. D. Laing

Beauty is more than just shining for others. You don’t need to have the perfect face to be beautiful. Being ugly or beautiful is a matter of energy, and true beauty comes from the heart.

Kristen Stewart

I believe that words uttered in passion contain a greater living truth than do those words which express thoughts rationally conceived. It is blood that moves the body. Words are not meant to stir the air only: they are capable of moving greater things.