A Quote by Camille Paglia

Elegance is reduction, simplification, condensation. It is spare, stark, sleek. Elegance is cultivated abstraction. The source of Greek and Roman classicism - clarity, order, proportion, balance - is in Egypt.

Camille Paglia

Quote Topics

Abstraction Balance Clarity Classicism Condensation Egypt Elegance Greek Order Proportion Reduction Roman Simplification Source Spare Stark

Quote Author

Camille Paglia
American - Author
Born: April 2, 1947

Elegance is the balance between PROPORTION, EMOTION & SURPRISE.

Valentino Garavani

The elegance of the Italian South is a very strong elegance and it is one that I bring. It is a sexy elegance - or at least, let's say less chaste.

Riccardo Tisci

It is important to notice that these badly functioning designs were praised for 'elegance.' But elegance as theoretical scientists apply it is quite different. The elegance of a mathematical formula is that it explains a phenomenon beautifully, with no parts left over. In design, elegance is more readily perceived as a property of product than of process. If we had more elegant theories, we might look to design for more than elegance.

Ralph Caplan

The 50s are the age of elegance. That's kind of my intention when I get dressed: casual elegance.

Laurence Fishburne

Elegance is always in style for men. There are all different kinds of elegance. It can be silk, it can be a T-shirt.

Donatella Versace

Elegance is innate. It has nothing to do with being well dressed. Elegance is refusal.

Diana Vreeland

It seems to me that invisibility is the required provision of elegance. Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.

Jean Cocteau

Elegance for one society is not elegance for another. It's in the eyes of the beholder.

Louise Wilson

Elegance must be the right combination of distinction, naturalness, care and simplicity. Outside this, believe me, there is no elegance. Only pretension.

Christian Dior

Why has elegance found so little following? That is the reality of it. Elegance has the disadvantage, if that's what it is, that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it.

Edsger Dijkstra

In order to create an image almost similar to that of a pencil case standing up and walking, I try to eliminate all excess by cutting. I have the feeling that this process (of "cutting off") is linked in some way to "elegance". Elegance and so-called "eliminating excess", or the beauty that remains after excess has beeen eliminated...

Yohji Yamamoto

Without elegance of the heart, there is no elegance.

Yves Saint Laurent

The natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety.

Samuel Johnson

Elegance is usually confused with superficiality, fashion, lack of depth. This is a serious mistake: human beings need to have elegance in their actions and in their posture because this word is synonymous with good taste, amiability, equilibrium and harmony.

Paulo Coelho

The traditional mathematician recognizes and appreciates mathematical elegance when he sees it. I propose to go one step further, and to consider elegance an essential ingredient of mathematics: if it is clumsy, it is not mathematics.

Edsger Dijkstra

My definition of elegance is the achievement of a given functionality with a minimum of mechanism and a maximum of clarity.