Beautiful Ornaments Quotes

Peace is the number one beautiful ornament you can wear, I really believe that. They say you should always wear a smile, but I don't believe that you should "always" wear a smile, seriously, you're going to look stupid! But peace, you should always carry peace within you, its the most beautifying thing you could ever have or do. Peace makes your heart beautiful and it makes you look beautiful, too. You want to have perfect physical posture when you stand, sit, and walk, and peace is the perfect posture of the soul, really. Try perfect posture outside as well as inside. Peace creates grace and grace gives peace.

Beauty doesn't need ornaments. Softness can't bear the weight of ornaments.

All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. If the greatnesses are in conjunction in a man or woman it is enough...the fact will prevail through the universe...but the gaggery and gilt of a million years will not prevail. Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is lost. This is what you shall so: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body...

Men were created before women. ... But that doesn't prove their superiority – rather, it proves ours, for they were born out of the lifeless earth in order that we could be born out of living flesh. And what's so important about this priority in creation, anyway? When we are building, we lay foundations on the ground first, things of no intrinsic merit or beauty, before subsequently raising up sumptuous buildings and ornate palaces. Lowly seeds are nourished in the earth, and then later the ravishing blooms appear; lovely roses blossom forth and scented narcissi.

...beauty is the projection of ugliness and by developing certain monstrosities we obtain the purest ornaments.

The full moon, well risen in a cloudless eastern sky, covered the high solitude with its light. We are not conscious of daylight as that which displaces darkness. Daylight, even when the sun is clear of clouds, seems to us simply the natural condition of the earth and air. When we think of the downs, we think of the downs in daylight, as with think of a rabbit with its fur on. Stubbs may have envisaged the skeleton inside the horse, but most of us do not: and we do not usually envisage the downs without daylight, even though the light is not a part of the down itself as the hide is part of the horse itself. We take daylight for granted. But moonlight is another matter. It is inconstant. The full moon wanes and returns again. Clouds may obscure it to an extent to which they cannot obscure daylight. Water is necessary to us, but a waterfall is not. Where it is to be found it is something extra, a beautiful ornament. We need daylight and to that extent it us utilitarian, but moonlight we do not need. When it comes, it serves no necessity. It transforms. It falls upon the banks and the grass, separating one long blade from another; turning a drift of brown, frosted leaves from a single heap to innumerable flashing fragments; or glimmering lengthways along wet twigs as though light itself were ductile. Its long beams pour, white and sharp, between the trunks of trees, their clarity fading as they recede into the powdery, misty distance of beech woods at night. In moonlight, two acres of coarse bent grass, undulant and ankle deep, tumbled and rough as a horse's mane, appear like a bay of waves, all shadowy troughs and hollows. The growth is so thick and matted that event the wind does not move it, but it is the moonlight that seems to confer stillness upon it. We do not take moonlight for granted. It is like snow, or like the dew on a July morning. It does not reveal but changes what it covers. And its low intensity---so much lower than that of daylight---makes us conscious that it is something added to the down, to give it, for only a little time, a singular and marvelous quality that we should admire while we can, for soon it will be gone again.

We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past -- whether he admits it or not -- can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.

I supposed that with her stunning beauty, she needed no ornamentation. It would have been like putting jewelry on a lion.

She was a triumph over ugliness, so often more beguiling than real beauty, if only because it contains paradox. In this case, as opposed to the scrupulous method of good taste and scientific grooming, the trick had been worked by exaggerating defects; she'd made them ornamental by admitting them boldly.

Now take a human body. Why wouldn't you like to see a human body with a curling tail with a crest of ostrich feathers at the end? And with ears shaped like acanthus leaves? It would be ornamental, you know, instead of the stark, bare ugliness we have now. Well, why don't you like the idea? Because it would be useless and pointless. Because the beauty of the human body is that is hasn't a single muscle which doesn't serve its purpose; that there's not a line wasted; that every detail of it fits one idea, the idea of a man and the life of a man.

The ornament of beauty, Shakespeare wrote, is suspect. And he was right. But beauty itself, unadorned and unaffected, is sacred, I think, worthy of our awe and our loyalty.

[A] smile is the most becoming ornament that any lady can wear.

it was a combination of beauty and strength that made southern women “whiskey in a teacup.” We may be delicate and ornamental on the outside, she said, but inside we’re strong and fiery.

Mother was,' June thought, 'a beautiful little ornament that was damaged.' Her broken edges cut her daughters in ways both emotional and physical, and only sharpened with age.

She was a Phantom of delight When first she gleam'd upon my sight; A lovely Apparition, sent To be a moment's ornament: Her eyes as stars of twilight fair; Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn; A dancing shape, an image gay, To haunt, to startle, and waylay.

Withdraw, like a turtle, into a hard yet harmless shell, ornamented with beautiful memories of the past. from the book 'I Know Who You Are!

I think there is a profound and enduring beauty in simplicity; in clarity, in efficiency. True simplicity is derived from so much more than just the absence of clutter and ornamentation. It's about bringing order to complexity.

But I want to extol not the sweetness nor the placidity of the dog, but the wilderness out of which he cannot step entirely, and from which we benefit. For wilderness is our first home too, and in our wild ride into modernity with all its concerns and problems we need also all the good attachments to that origin that we can keep or restore. Dog is one of the messengers of that rich and still magical first world. The dog would remind us of the pleasures of the body with its graceful physicality, and the acuity and rapture of the senses, and the beauty of forest and ocean and rain and our own breath. There is not a dog that romps and runs but we learn from him. The other dog—the one that all its life walks leashed and obedient down the sidewalk—is what a chair is to a tree. It is a possession only, the ornament of a human life. Such dogs can remind us of nothing large or noble or mysterious or lost. They cannot make us sweeter or more kind. Only unleashed dogs can do that. They are a kind of poetry themselves when they are devoted not only to us but to the wet night, to the moon and the rabbit-smell in the grass and their own bodies leaping forward.

A fighter never gives up. His scars are his ornaments. He may never be whole, yet he’s bigger than all his battles and beautiful, even in his brokenness.

Oho, now I know what you are. You are an advocate of Useful Knowledge.... Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position.

For our species, the idea of art as ornament is a relatively new one. Our ape brains got too big, too big for our heads, too big for our mothers to birth them. So we started keeping all our extra knowing in language, in art, in stories and books and songs. Art was a way of storing our brains in each other’s. It wasn’t until fairly recently in human history, when rich landowners wanted something pretty to look at in winter, that the idea of art-as-mere-ornament came around. A painting of a blooming rose to hang on the mantel when the flowers outside the window had gone to ice. And still in the twenty-first century, it’s hard for folks to move past that. This idea that beauty is the horizon toward which all great art must march. I’ve never been interested in that. “As heaven spins, I fall into bedlam.

There was very little about her face and figure that was in any way remarkable, but it was the sort of face which, when animated by conversation or laughter, is completely transformed. She had a lovely disposition, a quick mind and a fondness for the comical. She was always very ready to smile and, since a smile is the most becoming ornament that any lady can wear, she had been known upon occasion to outshine women who were acknowledged beauties in three countries.

When I looked up 'rococo' in the dictionary a while back it was defined as 'an ornamental style emphasizing the florid and the gorgeous, but lacking substance', and I couldn't help but laugh. It was so perfect. How could anything beautiful have 'substance' anyway? Pure beauty is always without meaning or morality.

Look on beauty, And you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight; Which therein works a miracle in nature, Making them lightest that wear most of it: So are those crisped snaky golden locks Which make such wanton gambols with the wind, Upon supposed fairness, often known To be the dowry of a second head, The skull that bred them in the sepulchre. Thus ornament is but the guiled shore To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word, The seeming truth which cunning times put on To entrap the wisest.

A beautiful smile is the prettiest ornament that you can find. Happiness is the prettiest color for your imaginative mind.

We are so made that we soon grow weary of ornament for sake of ornament, and even of beauty that makes no appeal to the heart or the understanding.

I've always thought about the theatre like a Christmas tree, all shining and bright with beautiful ornaments. But now it seems like a Christmas tree with the tinsel all tarnished and the colored balls all fallen off and broken...' Sure, I know what you mean...And it's both ways...Some of the ornaments fall and break and some stay clear and bright. Some of the tinsel gets tarnished and some stays shining and beautiful like the night before Christmas. Nothing's ever all one way. You know that. It's all mixed up and you've just got to find the part that's right for you.' —Elizabeth and Ben

No ornament can make a person look beautiful if the person has a bad heart! A good heart is the finest ornament, the best makeup, the best cloth, the best jewel, the best lipstick and the best earring!

Kitsch. Can't think of Engl. trans. for this word. A copy that's so proud of how close it comes to the original that it believes there's more worth in this closeness than in originality itself. "It looks like...!" Imposture of feeling over actual emotion; sentimentality over sentiment. Kitsch can also be in the eye: "The sunset looks like a painting!" Because artifice is now the ultimate standard, the original (sunset) has to be turned into a fake (painting), so that the latter may provide the measure of the former's beauty. Kitsch is always a form of inverted Platonism, prizing imitation over archetype. And in every case, it's related to an inflation of aesthetic value, as seen in the worst kind of kitsch: "classy" kitsch. Solemn, ornamental, grand. Ostentatiously, arrogantly announcing its divorce from authenticity.

Turn that worthless lawn into a beautiful garden of food whose seeds are stories sown, whose foods are living origins. Grow a garden on the flat roof of your apartment building, raise bees on the roof of your garage, grow onions in the iris bed, plant fruit and nut trees that bear, don't plant 'ornamentals', and for God's sake don't complain about the ripe fruit staining your carpet and your driveway; rip out the carpet, trade food to someone who raises sheep for wool, learn to weave carpets that can be washed, tear out your driveway, plant the nine kinds of sacred berries of your ancestors, raise chickens and feed them from your garden, use your fruit in the grandest of ways, grow grapevines, make dolmas, wine, invite your fascist neighbors over to feast, get to know their ancestral grief that made them prefer a narrow mind, start gardening together, turn both your griefs into food; instead of converting them, convert their garage into a wine, root, honey, and cheese cellar--who knows, peace might break out, but if not you still have all that beautiful food to feed the rest and the sense of humor the Holy gave you to know you're not worthless because you can feed both the people and the Holy with your two little able fists.

And in poetry, beauty is no ornament; it is the meaning. It is the truth.

This fable shows that ornaments of the spirit are preferable to a beautiful body.

The Tao Te Ching is partly in prose, partly in verse; but as we define poetry now, not by rhyme and meter but as a patterned intensity of language, the whole thing is poetry. I wanted to catch that poetry, its terse, strange beauty. Most translations have caught meanings in their net, but prosily, letting the beauty slip through. And in poetry, beauty is no ornament; it is the meaning. It is the truth. We have that on good authority.

All are architects of Fate, Working in these walls of Time; Some with massive deeds and great, Some with ornaments of rhyme. Nothing useless is, or low; Each thing in its place is best; And what seems but idle show Strengthens and supports the rest. For the structure that we raise, Time is with materials filled; Our todays and yesterdays Are the blocks with which we build. Truly shape and fashion these; Leave no yawning gaps between; Think not, because no man sees, Such things will remain unseen. In the elder days of Art, Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part; For the gods see everywhere. Let us do our work as well, Both the unseen and the seen; Make the house where gods may dwell Beautiful, entire, and clean. Else our lives are incomplete, Standing in these walls of Time, Broken stairways, where the feet Stumble, as they seek to climb. Build today, then, strong and sure, With a firm and ample base; And ascending and secure Shall tomorrow find its place. Thus alone can we attain To those turrets, where the eye Sees the world as one vast plain, And one boundless reach of sky.

Despise everything that useless toil creates as an ornament and an object of beauty. And reflect that nothing except the soul is worthy of wonder; for to the soul, if it be great, naught is great."[4]

Explosion is a beautiful word an a very big one. Later I learned others, the kind you can whisper only when you're alone. Inexorable. Ornamentation. Profile. Catastrophic. Electrical. District Nurse. They get bigger and bigger if you say them over and over again. You whisper and whisper and let the word grow untilnothing exists except the word.

A party at which the guests are all of the beautiful persuasion tends to be dull indeed, as they have no conversation that does not pertain to themselves. A successful gathering requires a number of the ill-favored but clever. The beautiful are but ornaments—desirable, but dispensable.

Dandelion spoke first; elaborately, fluently, colourfully and volubly, embellishing his tale with ornaments so beautiful and fanciful they almost obscured the fibs and confabulations. Then the Witcher spoke. He spoke the same truth, and spoke so dryly, boringly and flatly that Dandelion couldn’t bare it and kept butting in, for which the dwarves reprimanded him. And then the story was over and a lengthy silence fell. 'To the archer Milva!' Zoltan Chivay cleared his throat, saluting with his cup. 'To the Nilfgaardian. To Regis the herbalist who entertained the travellers in his cottage with moonshine and mandrake. And to Angoulême, whom I never knew. May the earth lie lightly on them all. May they have in the beyond plenty of whatever they were short of on earth. And may their names live forever in songs and tales. Let’s drink to them.

I will not subscribe to the argument that ornament increases the pleasure of the life of a cultivated person, or the argument which covers itself with the words: “But if the ornament is beautiful! ...” To me, and to all the cultivated people, ornament does not increase the pleasures of life. If I want to eat a piece of gingerbread I will choose one that is completely plain and not a piece which represents a baby in arms of a horserider, a piece which is covered over and over with decoration. The man of the fifteenth century would not understand me. But modern people will. The supporter of ornament believes that the urge for simplicity is equivalent to self-denial. No, dear professor from the College of Applied Arts, I am not denying myself! To me, it tastes better this way.

I come not, Ambrosia for any of the purposes thou hast named," replied Marcela, "but to defend myself and to prove how unreasonable are all those who blame me for their sorrow and for Chrysostom's death; and therefore I ask all of you that are here to give me your attention, for will not take much time or many words to bring the truth home to persons of sense. Heaven has made me, so you say, beautiful, and so much so that in spite of yourselves my beauty leads you to love me; and for the love you show me you say, and even urge, that I am bound to love you. By that natural understanding which God has given me I know that everything beautiful attracts love, but I cannot see how, by reason of being loved, that which is loved for its beauty is bound to love that which loves it; besides, it may happen that the lover of that which is beautiful may be ugly, and ugliness being detestable, it is very absurd to say, "I love thee because thou art beautiful, thou must love me though I be ugly." But supposing the beauty equal on both sides, it does not follow that the inclinations must be therefore alike, for it is not every beauty that excites love, some but pleasing the eye without winning the affection; and if every sort of beauty excited love and won the heart, the will would wander vaguely to and fro unable to make choice of any; for as there is an infinity of beautiful objects there must be an infinity of inclinations, and true love, I have heard it said, is indivisible, and must be voluntary and not compelled. If this be so, as I believe it to be, why do you desire me to bend my will by force, for no other reason but that you say you love me? Nay—tell me—had Heaven made me ugly, as it has made me beautiful, could I with justice complain of you for not loving me? Moreover, you must remember that the beauty I possess was no choice of mine, for, be it what it may, Heaven of its bounty gave it me without my asking or choosing it; and as the viper, though it kills with it, does not deserve to be blamed for the poison it carries, as it is a gift of nature, neither do I deserve reproach for being beautiful; for beauty in a modest woman is like fire at a distance or a sharp sword; the one does not burn, the other does not cut, those who do not come too near. Honour and virtue are the ornaments of the mind, without which the body, though it be so, has no right to pass for beautiful; but if modesty is one of the virtues that specially lend a grace and charm to mind and body, why should she who is loved for her beauty part with it to gratify one who for his pleasure alone strives with all his might and energy to rob her of it?

Lillian moved forward to meet her, studying her with curiosity. They had met before, on infrequent occasions, and she found it strange to see Dagny Taggart wearing an evening gown. It was a black dress with a bodice that fell as a cape over one arm and shoulder, leaving the other bare: the naked shoulder was the gown’s only ornament. Seeing her in the suits she wore, one never thought of dagny taggart’s body. The black dress seemed excessively revealing – because it was astonishing to discover that the lines of her shoulder were fragile and beautiful, and that the diamond band on the wrist of her naked arm gave her the most feminine of all aspects: the look of being chained.

We believe women are suffering not only because of the ways beauty is being defined; we are suffering because we are being defined by beauty. We are burdened with the task of looking beautiful and feeling beautiful (to others as well as to ourselves) because we live in a world that defines our value in terms of our physical appeal to others and defines our body image in terms of our physical appeal to ourselves. Being viewed as objects is the real root of our problem, not which beauty ideals are in vogue for female objects.

Young things like you don't need any ornaments but those you wear to-night: youth, health, intelligence, and modesty.

in you has been seen that matchless ornament, that loveliest beauty which is not dependent on any time of life, that greatest glory of all – modesty.

Let’s imagine something better than beautiful for ourselves and everyone we love.

Withdraw, like a turtle, into a hard yet harmless shell, ornamented with beautiful memories of the past. from the book 'I Know Who You Are!

In a loved one's beauty, there is solace, comfort in its presence, and the hope - no, the belief - the certainty that possession of so fine an ornament might be sustenance enough.

Her mind was as destitute of beauty and mystery as the prairie school-house in which she had been educated; and her ideals seemed to Ralph as pathetic as the ornaments made of corks and cigar-bands with which her infant hands had been taught to adorn it. He was beginning to understand this, and learning to adapt himself to the narrow compass of her experience.

Events come to people, not people to events. Why do some people have exciting lives and other people dull ones? Because of their surroundings? Not at all. One man may travel to the ends of the earth and nothing will happen to him. There will be a massacre a week before he arrives, and an earthquake the day after he leaves, and the boat that he nearly took will be shipwrecked. And another man may live at Balham and travel to the City every day, and things will happen to him. He will be mixed up with blackmailing gangs and beautiful girls and motor bandits. There are people with a tendency to shipwrecks--even if they go on a boat on an ornamental lake, something will happen to it.

[Christianity] is a religion for slaves and women!' said the warrior of old. (Slaves and women were largely the same thing.) 'It is a religion for slaves and women' says the advocate of the Superman. Well? Who did the work of all the ancient world? Who raised the food and garnered it and cooked it and served it? Who built the houses, the temples, the aqueducts, the city wall? Who made the furniture, the tools, the weapons, the utensils, the ornaments--made them strong and beautiful and useful? Who kept the human race going, somehow, in spite of the constant hideous waste of war, and slowly built up the real industrial civilization behind that gory show?--Why just the slaves and women.

The best I can suggest is that when the Absolute manifested itself in the world evil was the natural correlation of good. You could never have had the stupendous beauty of the Himalayas without the unimaginable horror of a convulsion of the earth's crust. The Chinese craftsman who makes a vase in what they call eggshell porcelain can give it a lovely shape, ornament it with a beautiful design, stain it a ravishing colour and give it a perfect glaze, but from its very nature he can't make it anything but fragile. If you drop in on the floor it will break into a dozen fragments. Isn't possible in the same way that the values we cherish in the world can only exist in combination with evil?

forests are the ornaments of the earth, that they teach mankind to understand beauty and attune his mind to lofty sentiments. Forests temper a stern climate, and in countries where the climate is milder, less strength is wasted in the battle with nature, and the people are kind and gentle. The inhabitants of such countries are handsome, tractable, sensitive, graceful in speech and gesture. Their philosophy is joyous, art and science blossom among them, their treatment of women is full of exquisite nobility——

Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past—whether he admits it or not—can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.

The moon got loose last night, and slid down and fell out of the scheme–a very great loss; it breaks my heart to think of it. There isn’t another thing among the ornaments and decorations that is comparable to it for beauty and finish. It should have been fastened better. If we can only get it back again-

light is not a part of the down itself as the hide is part of the horse itself. We take daylight for granted. But moonlight is another matter. It is inconstant. The full moon wanes and returns again. Clouds may obscure it to an extent to which they cannot obscure daylight. Water is necessary to us, but a waterfall is not. Where it is to be found it is something extra, a beautiful ornament. We need daylight and to that extent it is utilitarian, but moonlight we do not need. When it comes, it serves no necessity. It transforms. It falls upon the banks and the grass, separating one long blade from another; turning a drift of brown, frosted leaves from a single heap to innumerable flashing fragments; or glimmering lengthways along wet twigs as though light itself were ductile. Its long beams pour, white and sharp, between the trunks of trees, their clarity fading as they recede into the powdery, misty distance of beech woods at night. In moonlight, two acres of coarse bent grass, undulant and ankle deep, tumbled and rough as a horse’s mane, appear like a bay of waves, all shadowy troughs and hollows. The growth is so thick and matted that even the wind does not move it, but it is the moonlight that seems to confer

The portraits, of more historical than artistic interest, had gone; and tapestry, full of the blue and bronze of peacocks, fell over the doors, and shut out all history and activity untouched with beauty and peace; and now when I looked at my Crevelli and pondered on the rose in the hand of the Virgin, wherein the form was so delicate and precise that it seemed more like a thought than a flower, or at the grey dawn and rapturous faces of my Francesca, I knew all a Christian's ecstasy without his slavery to rule and custom; when I pondered over the antique bronze gods and goddesses, which I had mortgaged my house to buy, I had all a pagan's delight in various beauty and without his terror at sleepless destiny and his labour with many sacrifices; and I had only to go to my bookshelf, where every book was bound in leather, stamped with intricate ornament, and of a carefully chosen colour: Shakespeare in the orange of the glory of the world, Dante in the dull red of his anger, Milton in the blue grey of his formal calm; and I could experience what I would of human passions without their bitterness and without satiety. I had gathered about me all gods because I believed in none, and experienced every pleasure because I gave myself to none, but held myself apart, individual, indissoluble, a mirror of polished steel: I looked in the triumph of this imagination at the birds of Hera, glowing in the firelight as though they were wrought of jewels; and to my mind, for which symbolism was a necessity, they seemed the doorkeepers of my world, shutting out all that was not of as affluent a beauty as their own; and for a moment I thought as I had thought in so many other moments, that it was possible to rob life of every bitterness except the bitterness of death; and then a thought which had followed this thought, time after time, filled me with a passionate sorrow.

was not a matter of looks, but of picking the dresses that were the most flattering, the ornaments that drew the eye, in order to rise from mere beauty to perfection.

The ornament of beauty, Shakespeare wrote, is suspect. And he was right. But beauty itself, unadorned and unaffected, is sacred, I think, worthy of our awe and our loyalty.

Beauty doesn’t make you, so it can’t break you, either.

Just think how beautiful you can be if kindness is your ornament of beauty.

Her hair was left down in ringing curls, a fiery crown of glory no metal ornamental headdress could compete with.

So is it not with me as with that Muse, Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse, Who heaven itself for ornament doth use And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,

Honour and virtue are ornaments of the soul, and without them the body, even if it is beautiful, shouldn’t seem beautiful.

O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem By that sweet ornament which truth doth give! The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem For that sweet odour, which doth in it live.

GOOD DESIGN IS SIMPLE. You hear this from math to painting. In math it means that a shorter proof tends to be a better one. Where axioms are concerned, especially, less is more. It means much the same thing in programming. For architects and designers, it means that beauty should depend on a few carefully chosen structural elements rather than a profusion of superficial ornament.

Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day

What angels invented these splendid ornaments, these rich conveniences, this ocean of air above, this ocean of water beneath, this firmament of earth between? this zodiac of lights, this tent of dropping clouds, this striped coat of climates, this fourfold year? Beasts, fire, water, stones, and corn serve him. The field is at once his floor, his work-yard, his play-ground, his garden, and his bed

Look at me," she said, throwing wide her arms, appearing vulnerable, beautiful, helpless. "Do you know what I am? I am a pretty, useless ornament who always believed she'd have a man to take care of her.

One party went to far away Zimbabwe and returned with pack-oxen loaded with ivory, rhinoceros hides, lion skins and hog tusks. They reported finding a people whose women dug the mountain sides for nuggets and brittle stones, which they brought home to boil and produce a beautiful metal from which to mould bangles and ornaments of rare beauty. That was the Matebele’s first experience of gold smelting. [182]

The dawn had drawn an intricate ornament with golden curvy clouds, hiding the rising sun that was on its way to dry up the trails of yesterday’s storm and to warm up the upcoming day with its healing rays.

Art is not a diversion, it is the summit of human understanding. Literature is not the construction of a beautiful though frail glittering glass ornament. It is the creation of a prism through which we are able to see the world we live in in a way we never have before. It is not the plaything of ivory tower intellectuals nor an escapist drug for bored housewives, but the raw, pulsing stuff of life, the essence, the soul.

Dorothea always said that it was a combination of beauty and strength that made southern women “whiskey in a teacup.” We may be delicate and ornamental on the outside, she said, but inside we’re strong and fiery. Our famous hospitality isn’t martyrdom; it’s modeling. True southern women treat everyone the way we want to be treated: with grace and respect—no matter where they come from or how different from you they may be.

As Samantha wrapped the ornament in paper, and placed it in a bag, Mrs. Ryan said, “Hearts are like that spun glass, beautiful and fragile, and easily broken.” With a Mona Lisa smile, she turned and left the store.

O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem   By that sweet ornament which truth doth give.   The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem   For that sweet odour, which doth in it live.   The canker blooms have full as deep a dye   As the perfumed tincture of the roses.   Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly   When summer's breath their masked buds discloses:   But, for their virtue only is their show,   They live unwoo'd, and unrespected fade;   Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;   Of their sweet deaths, are sweetest odours made:     And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,     When that shall vade, by verse distills your truth.

Pandora, who walked down the aisle of the estate chapel on Devon's arm, was radiantly beautiful in a dress of white silk, the billowing skirts so intricately gathered and draped that no lace or ornamental trim had been necessary. She wore a coronet of fresh daisies and a veil of sheer tulle and carried a small bouquet of roses and daisies. If West had any remaining doubts about St. Vincent's true feelings for his bride, they were forever banished as he saw the man's expression. St. Vincent stared at Pandora as if she were a miracle, his cool composure disrupted by a faint flush of emotion. When Pandora reached him and the veil was pushed back, St. Vincent broke with etiquette by leaning down to press a tender kiss on her forehead. "That part isn't 'til later," Pandora whispered to him, but it was loud enough that the people around them overheard, and a rustle of laughter swept through the crowd.

Mother Nature had blessed her with the customary rear-end one expects of a Brazilian smokeshow. However, her chest was ornamented by a beautiful set of bolt-ons, arguably the only thing man has crafted better than the hand of God.

It is a remarkable fact that the people who do things by hand still find time to add to their work some elaboration of mere beauty which makes it a joy to look on, while our machine-made tools, which could do so at much less cost, are too utilitarian to afford any ornament. It used to give me daily pleasure in Teheran to see the sacks in which refuse is carried off the streets woven with a blue and red decorative pattern: but can one imagine a borough council in Leeds or Birmingham expressing a delicate fancy of this kind? Beauty, according to these, is what one buys for the museum: pots and pans, taps and door-handles, though one has to look at them twenty times a day, have no call to be beautiful. So we impoverish our souls and keep our lovely things for rare occasions, even as our lovely thoughts - wasting the most of life in pondering domestic molehills or the Stock Exchange, among objects as ugly as the less attractive forms of sin.

I was a hidden treasure, and I loved to be known, and so I created the worlds both visible and invisible.”4 Both the saying itself and the understanding that illumines it derive from a profound mystical intuition that our created universe is a vast mirror, or ornament (and the Greek word “cosmos” literally means “an ornament”), through which divine potentiality—beautiful, fathomless, endlessly creative—projects itself into form in order to realize fully the depths of divine love.

When he looks at me, Meri, he makes me feel like the most beautiful woman in the world, as if he could gaze at me for a lifetime and never grow tired of my face. As if he sees not just who I am, but who I can become. And when I look at him, not only do I see a handsome suitor who makes my heart flutter, I see a solid, dependable man who can be counted on no matter how difficult the road may become. A man who wants more than a pretty ornament to dangle on his arm. A man who wants a partner.

My visit to Her Highness was an agreeable surprise for me. Instead of being ushered into the presence of an over-decorated woman, sporting diamond pendants and necklaces, I found myself in the presence of a modest young woman who relied not upon jewels or gaudy dress for beauty but on her own naturally well formed features and exactness of manners. Her room was as plainly furnished as she was plainly dressed. Her severe simplicity became an object of my envy. She seemed to me an object lesson for many a prince and many a millionaire whose loud ornamentation, ugly looking diamonds, rings and studs and still more loud and almost vulgar furniture offend the taste and present a terrible and sad contrast between them and the masses from whom they derive their wealth.

Before marriage, young girls must be, above all other things, sweet, gentle, beautiful and ornamental, but, after marriage, they were expected to manage households that numbered a hundred people or more, white and black, and they were trained with that in view.

Now take a human body. Why wouldn't you like to see a human body with a curling tail with a crest of ostrich feathers at the end? And with ears shaped like acanthus leaves? It would be ornamental, you know, instead of the stark, bare ugliness we have now. Well, why don't you like the idea? Because it would be useless and pointless. Because the beauty of the human body is that it hasn't a single muscle which doesn't serve its purpose, you want to choke it with trimmings, you want to sacrifice its purpose to its envelope -- not knowing even why you want that kind of an envelope? You want it to look like a hybrid beast produced by crossing the bastards of ten different species until you get a creature without guts, without heart or brain, a creature all pelt, tail, claws and feathers? Why? You must tell me, because I've never been able to understand it.

Siddhartha looked at Yasodhara and then confusedly at the ornaments remaining on the table. He appeared flustered—there was nothing on the table worthy of Yasodhara’s beauty. Suddenly he smiled. He removed the necklace around his own neck and held it out to Yasodhara. “This is my gift to you, princess.

From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty's rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory: But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel. Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament And only herald to the gaudy spring, Within thine own bud buriest thy content, And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding. Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

The best I can suggest is that when the Absolute manifested itself in the world evil was the natural correlation of good. You could never have had the stupendous beauty of the Himalayas without the unimaginable horror of a convulsion of the earth’s crust. The Chinese craftsman who makes a vase in what they call eggshell porcelain can give it a lovely shape, ornament it with a beautiful design, stain it a ravishing color, and give it a perfect glaze, but from its very nature he can’t make it anything but fragile. If you drop it on the floor it will break into a dozen fragments. Isn’t it possible in the same way that the values we cherish in the world can only exist in combination with evil?

Humans, too, are becoming numerous. We don’t cull egrets because they are beautiful and ornamental. We don’t cull humans because they are economically useful. However, if left completely unchecked, they would both ruin their environment. They eat; they breed; they shit. Neither is good at keeping their world clean and tidy. Too stupid, essentially.

She wore a dress of white satin, elegant and unusual in its simplicity, with no fussy ruffles and frills to distract from the lovely shape of her figure. Instead of wearing the traditional veil, she had drawn the sides of her hair up to the crown of her head and let the rest cascade down her back in long golden coils. Her only ornamentation was a tiara of graduated diamond stars, which Tom had sent upstairs that morning as a Christmas gift. The wealth of rose-cut gems glittered madly in the candlelight, but they couldn't eclipse her sparkling eyes and radiant face. She looked like a snow queen walking through a winter forest, too beautiful to be entirely human. And there he stood, with his heart in his fist.

It may be that there is no solution or it may be that I'm not clever enough to find it. Ramakrishna looked upon the world as the sport of God. "It is like a game," he said. "In this game there are joy and sorrow, virtue and vice, knowledge and ignorance, good and evil., The game cannot continue if sin and suffering are altogether eliminated from the creation." I would reject that with all my strength. The best I can suggest is that when the Absolute manifested itself in the world evil was the natural correlation of good. You could never have had the stupendous beauty of the Himalayas without the unimaginable horror of a convulsion of the earth's crust. The Chinese craftsman who makes a vase in what they call eggshell porcelain can give it a lovely shape, ornament it with a beautiful design, stain it a ravishing colour, and give it a perfect glaze, but from its very nature he can't make it anything but fragile. If you drop it on the floor it will break into a dozen fragments. Isn't it possible in the same way that the values we cherish in the world can only exist in combination with evil?

If there was one thing Regan would willingly say about herself, it was that she was an ornament, a novelty, a party trick. She was the center of attention when she wished to be, quick-witted and charming and impeccably dressed, but those types of girls grew dull when there were no eccentricities or blemishes. The world loved to take a beautiful woman and exclaim at the charm of her single imperfection

We believe women are suffering not only because of the ways beauty is being defined; we are suffering because we are being defined by beauty. We are burdened with the task of looking beautiful and feeling beautiful (to others as well as to ourselves) because we live in a world that defines our value in terms of our physical appeal to others and defines our body image in terms of our physical appeal to ourselves.

To grant [consolation and joy] to those who mourn in Zion—to give them an ornament (a garland or diadem) of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, the garment [expressive] of praise instead of a heavy, burdened, and failing spirit—that they may be called oaks of righteousness [lofty, strong, and magnificent, distinguished for uprightness, justice, and right standing with God], the planting of the Lord, that He

No picture of a medieval library can be complete unless it be remembered that in many cases beauty was no less an object than utility. The bookcases were fine specimens of carpentry-work, carved and decorated; the pavement was of encaustic tiles worked in patterns; the walls were decorated with plaster-work in relief; the windows were filled with stained glass; and the roof-timbers were ornamented with the coat-armour of benefactors.

Why, all our art treasures of to-day are only the dug-up commonplaces of three or four hundred years ago. I wonder if there is real intrinsic beauty in the old soup-plates, beer-mugs, and candle-snuffers that we prize so now, or if it is only the halo of age glowing around them that gives them their charms in our eyes. The “old blue” that we hang about our walls as ornaments were the common every-day household utensils of a few centuries ago; and the pink shepherds and the yellow shepherdesses that we hand round now for all our friends to gush over, and pretend they understand, were the unvalued mantel-ornaments that the mother of the eighteenth century would have given the baby to suck when he cried. Will it be the same in the future? Will the prized treasures of to-day always be the cheap trifles of the day before? Will rows of our willow-pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd? Will the white cups with the gold rim and the beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our Sarah Janes now break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefully mended, and stood upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of the house? That china dog that ornaments the bedroom of my furnished lodgings. It is a white dog. Its eyes blue. Its nose is a delicate red, with spots. Its head is painfully erect, its expression is amiability carried to verge of imbecility. I do not admire it myself. Considered as a work of art, I may say it irritates me. Thoughtless friends jeer at it, and even my landlady herself has no admiration for it, and excuses its presence by the circumstance that her aunt gave it to her. But in 200 years’ time it is more than probable that that dog will be dug up from somewhere or other, minus its legs, and with its tail broken, and will be sold for old china, and put in a glass cabinet. And people will pass it round, and admire it. They will be struck by the wonderful depth of the colour on the nose, and speculate as to how beautiful the bit of the tail that is lost no doubt was. We, in this age, do not see the beauty of that dog. We are too familiar with it. It is like the sunset and the stars: we are not awed by their loveliness because they are common to our eyes. So it is with that china dog. In 2288 people will gush over it. The making of such dogs will have become a lost art. Our descendants will wonder how we did it, and say how clever we were. We shall be referred to lovingly as “those grand old artists that flourished in the nineteenth century, and produced those china dogs.” The “sampler” that the eldest daughter did at school will be spoken of as “tapestry of the Victorian era,” and be almost priceless. The blue-and-white mugs of the present-day roadside inn will be hunted up, all cracked and chipped, and sold for their weight in gold, and rich people will use them for claret cups; and travellers from Japan will buy up all the “Presents from Ramsgate,” and “Souvenirs of Margate,” that may have escaped destruction, and take them back to Jedo as ancient English curios.

Just as the Mediterranean separated France from the country Algiers, so did the Mississippi separate New Orleans proper from Algiers Point. The neighborhood had a strange mix. It looked seedier and more laid-back all at the same time. Many artists lived on the peninsula, with greenery everywhere and the most beautiful and exotic plants. The French influence was heavy in Algiers, as if the air above the water had carried as much ambience as it could across to the little neighborhood. There were more dilapidated buildings in the community, but Jackson and Buddy passed homes with completely manicured properties, too, and wild ferns growing out of baskets on the porches, as if they were a part of the architecture. Many of the buildings had rich, ornamental detail, wood trim hand-carved by craftsmen and artisans years ago. The community almost had the look of an ailing beach town on some forgotten coast.

Whatever increases the fertility of land in producing food ... contributes likewise to increase that of many other lands, by creating a new demand for their produce. That abundance of food, of which, in consequence of the improvement of land, many people have the disposal beyond what they themselves can consume, is the great cause of the demand both for the precious metals and the precious stones, as well as for every other conveniency and ornament of dress, lodging, household furniture, and equipage ... The poor inhabitants of Cuba and St. Domingo, when they were first discovered by the Spaniards, used to wear little bits of gold as ornaments in their hair and other parts of their dress. They seemed to value them as we would do any little pebbles of somewhat more than ordinary beauty, and to consider them just worth the picking up, but not worth the refusing to anybody who asked them ... They were astonished to observe the rage of the Spaniards to obtain them, and had no notion that there could anywhere be a country in which many people had the disposal of so great a superfluity of food, so scanty always among themselves, that for a very small quantity of those glittering baubles they would willingly give as much as might maintain a family for many years. Could they have been made to understand this, the passion of the Spaniards would not have surprised them.

Sonnet 70: That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect, For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair; The ornament of beauty is suspect, A crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air. So thou be good, slander doth but approve Thy worth the greater, being wooed of time; For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love, And thou present’st a pure unstained prime. Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days Either not assailed, or victor being charged; Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise, To tie up envy, evermore enlarged, If some suspect of ill masked not thy show, Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.

Nature loves logarithmic spirals. From sunflowers, seashells, and whirlpools, to hurricanes and giant spiral galaxies, it seems that nature chose this marvelous shape as its favorite "ornament." The constant shape of the logarithmic spiral on all size scales reveals itself beautifully in nature in the shapes of minuscule fossils or unicellular organisms known as foraminifera. Although the spiral shells in this care are composite structures (and not one continuous tube), X-ray images of the internal structure of these fossils show that the shape of the logarithmic spiral remained essentially unchanged for millions of years.

In this course which our ancestors took there was a show of prudence at least, as if their principle were to satisfy the more pressing wants first. But are the more pressing wants satisfied now? When I think of acquiring for myself one of our luxurious dwellings, I am deterred, for, so to speak, the country is not yet adapted to human culture, and we are still forced to cut our spiritual bread far thinner than our forefathers did their wheaten. Not that all architectural ornament is to be neglected even in the rudest periods; but let our houses first be lined with beauty, where they come in contact with our lives, like the tenement of the shellfish, and not overlaid with it. But, alas! I have been inside one or two of them, and know what they are lined with.

Dandelion spoke first; elaborately, fluently, colourfully and volubly, embellishing his tale with ornaments so beautiful and fanciful they almost obscured the fibs and confabulations. Then the Witcher spoke. He spoke the same truth, and spoke so dryly, boringly and flatly that Dandelion couldn’t bear it and kept butting in, for which the dwarves reprimanded him. And then the story was over and a lengthy silence fell. “To the archer Milva!” Zoltan Chivay cleared his throat, saluting with his cup. “To the Nilfgaardian. To Regis the herbalist who entertained the travellers in his cottage with moonshine and mandrake. And to Angoulême, whom I never knew. May the earth lie lightly on them all. May they have in the beyond plenty of whatever they were short of on earth.

He went on thus to call over names celebrated in Scottish song, and most of which had recently received a romantic interest from his own pen. In fact, I saw a great part of the border country spread out before me, and could trace the scenes of those poems and romances which had, in a manner, bewitched the world. I gazed about me for a time with mute surprise, I may almost say with disappointment. I beheld a mere succession of gray waving hills, line beyond line, as far as my eye could reach; monotonous in their aspect, and so destitute of trees, that one could almost see a stout fly walking along their profile; and the far-famed Tweed appeared a naked stream, flowing between bare hills, without a tree or thicket on its banks; and yet, such had been the magic web of poetry and romance thrown over the whole, that it had a greater charm for me than the richest scenery I beheld in England. I could not help giving utterance to my thoughts. Scott hummed for a moment to himself, and looked grave; he had no idea of having his muse complimented at the expense of his native hills. "It may be partiality," said he, at length; "but to my eye, these gray hills and all this wild border country have beauties peculiar to themselves. I like the very nakedness of the land; it has something bold, and stern, and solitary about it. When I have been for some time in the rich scenery about Edinburgh, which is like ornamented garden land, I begin to wish myself back again among my own honest gray hills; and if I did not see the heather at least once a year, I think I should die!

Sumptuary laws were passed by the Senate limiting expenditure on banquets and clothing, but as the senators ignored these regulations, no one bothered to observe them. “The citizens,” Cato mourned, “no longer listen to good advice, for the belly has no ears.”9 The individual became rebelliously conscious of himself as against the state, the son as against the father, the woman as against the man. Usually the power of woman rises with the wealth of a society, for when the stomach is satisfied hunger leaves the field to love. Prostitution flourished. Homosexualism was stimulated by contact with Greece and Asia; many rich men paid a talent ($3600) for a male favorite; Cato complained that a pretty boy cost more than a farm.10 But women did not yield the field to these Greek and Syrian invaders. They took eagerly to all those supports of beauty that wealth now put within their reach. Cosmetics became a necessity, and caustic soap imported from Gaul tinged graying hair into auburn locks.11 The rich bourgeois took pride in adorning his wife and daughter with costly clothing or jewelry and made them the town criers of his prosperity. Even in government the role of women grew. Cato cried out that “all other men rule over women; but we Romans, who rule all men, are ruled by our women.”12 In 195 B.C.. the free women of Rome swept into the Forum and demanded the repeal of the Oppian Law of 215, which had forbidden women to use gold ornaments, varicolored dresses, or chariots. Cato predicted the ruin of Rome if the law should be repealed. Livy puts into his mouth a speech that every generation has heard:

Quickly, I slid into the rifts between stars. I imagined the space as a sphere bedizened with little astral ornaments, and soon those heavy celestial bodies became small as candies held in one’s palms. The thread easily looped them together. I grinned, turning to Amar. Between us was a sphere thick with stars and around us twined soft shadows like cats weaving between ankles. “Magnificent,” he said. His gaze was full of awe, but I saw something else in his eyes. Longing. Then, he reached into the sphere, drawing out the string with the three stars. He twisted them between his hands, fashioning a constellation no larger than a sparrow. Amar stepped forward, sliding the stars above my ear. It cast a glow that turned his face silvery and beautiful. “There, my queen,” he said. “A constellation to wear in your hair.

She sprang out of bed, the ornaments in her hair tinkling and jingling, making tiny versions of the noises of the chimes above her. And that was Rapunzel's most striking beauty: her hair. Bound in plaits and whorls and buns and knots and twists as tightly as she could manage. Some of the braids were so long they hung in loops that she put her arms through; they hung at her sides like giant sleeves or tippets from an ancient dress. Decorating all of this were dozens of charms-- also silver, like her hair, but some with exotic stones like lapis and turquoise. Bells, tiny moons, hands, suns, six-pointed stars, eyes, and anything else Mother Gothel could lay her hands on at her daughter's request. By these amulets Rapunzel definitely tried to control her hair, bind her hair, disempower her hair, and unenchant her magic hair.

there were solid gold and silver vessels and ornaments, crusted with gems, miles of jewel-sewn brocade, gorgeous pictures and statues that the troops just hacked and smashed, beautiful enamel and porcelain trampled underfoot, weapons and standards set with rubies and emeralds which were gouged and hammered from their settings—all this among the powder-smoke and blood, with native soldiers who’d never seen above ten rupees in their lives, and slum-ruffians from Glasgow and Liverpool, all staggering about drunk on plunder and killing and destruction. One thing I’m sure of: there was twice as much treasure destroyed as carried away, and we officers were too busy bagging our share to do anything about it. I daresay a philosopher would have made heavy speculation about that scene, if he’d had time to spare from filling his pockets. I

Yeah. She's still just observing though. She's too useless to even carry plates at the moment, so please just think of her as some Russian ornament.” Tom laughed at the owner's blunt response, and asked another question. “Chief, how do I say something like, 'you're beautiful', in Russian?” “...... 'Vi ocharovatelny'.” “Err... Bee, acherabatennen.” However, hearing this, the Caucasian woman looked confused at Tom, and spoke to the owner behind the counter. “...... What is this man saying? It is unintelligible. I question its relation to the Japanese language.” With a bitter smile, the owner turned his head towards the woman, and spoke to her. “'Vi ocharovatelny'.” “...... Why do you suddenly speak these social compliments? Please concisely explain your reasoning.” “That's what that young man over there just tried to say to you.” “In which language, exactly?” Listening to their conversation,

Shakespeare possesses the power of subordinating nature for the purposes of expression, beyond all poets. His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to embody any caprice of thought that is upper-most in his mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together, by a subtle spiritual connection. We are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet. Thus, in his sonnets, the lays of birds, the scents and dyes of flowers, he finds to be the shadow of his beloved; time, which keeps her from him, is his chest; the suspicion she has awakened, is her ornament; The ornament of beauty is Suspect, A crow which flies in heaven's sweetest air. His passion is not the fruit of chance; it swells, as he speaks, to a city, or a state. No, it was builded far from accident; It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls Under the brow of thralling discontent; It fears not policy, that heretic, That works on leases of short numbered hours, But all alone stands hugely politic.

It became clear to me that art is an ornamentation of life, something that lures us into life. But life had lost its charm for me, so how was I to charm others? As long as I was not living my own life but the life of another that was carrying me along on its crest, as long as I believed that life had a meaning, even though I could not express it, the reflection of every kind of life through literature and the arts gave me pleasure; I enjoyed looking at life in the mirror of art. But when I began to search for the meaning of life, when I began to feel the need to live, this mirror became either torment­ ing or unnecessary, superfluous and ludicrous. It was no longer possible for me to be consoled by what I saw in the mirror, for I could see that my situation was stupid and despairing. It was good for me to rejoice when in the depths of my soul I believed that my life had meaning. Then this play of lights and shades, the play of the comical, the tragic, the moving, the beautiful, and the terrible elements in life had comforted me. But when I saw that life was meaningless and terrible the play in the mirror could no longer amuse me

The redeemed have all their objective good in God. God himself is the great good which they are brought to the possession and enjoyment of by redemption. He is the highest good, and the sum of all that good which Christ purchased. God is the inheritance of the saints; he is the portion of their souls. God is their wealth and treasure, their food, their life, their dwelling place, their ornament and diadem, and their everlasting honor and glory. They have none in heaven but God; he is the great good which the redeemed are received to at death, and which they are to rise to at the end of the world. The Lord God, he is the light of the heavenly Jerusalem; and is the 'river of the water of life' that runs, and the tree of life that grows, 'in the midst of the paradise of God'. The glorious excellencies and beauty of God will be what will forever entertain the minds of the saints, and the love of God will be their everlasting feast. The redeemed will indeed enjoy other things; they will enjoy the angels, and will enjoy one another: but that which they shall enjoy in the angels, or each other, or in anything else whatsoever, that will yield them delight and happiness, will be what will be seen of God in them.8

I paused at the top of the spiral staircase, and soaked in the view. In the daylight, the bookstore took on a new life. Motes of dust danced in the sunlight that streamed through the windows. It looked a lot cozier, as the colored glass window ornaments threw rainbows across the bookshelves and pirouetted across the hardwood floors like flecks of dappled sunlight on sand. Bookcases, filled to the brim, reached up to the ceiling, cluttered with so many colors and kinds of books, short and fat, long and wide, that it almost felt like an assault on the senses. The center of the bookstore was open to the second floor, where tall bookshelves towered so high you had to reach them with ladders. Heavy oak beams supported the roof. Planetariums and glass chimes and other ornaments hung from the rafters, catching the morning's golden light and throwing it across the store. The shelves were made from the same deep oak as the ceiling beams and the banisters on the second floor, signs hanging from the eye-level shelves detailing the different sections of the store: MEMOIR, FANTASY, SCI-FI, ROMANCE, SELF-HELP, NATURE, HOW-TO... This place was beautiful. I wondered, briefly, what it would be like to own a place like this. It was magical. A shop that sold the impossible inked onto soft white paper.

In the material world, opulences are achieved by materialistic persons by dint of their labor. One cannot enjoy material prosperity unless he works very hard to achieve it. But the devotees of the Lord who are residents of Vaikuṇṭha have the opportunity to enjoy a transcendental situation of jewels and emeralds. Ornaments made of gold bedecked with jewels are achieved not by working hard but by the benediction of the Lord. In other words, devotees in the Vaikuṇṭha world, or even in this material world, cannot be poverty-stricken, as is sometimes supposed. They have ample opulences for enjoyment, but they need not labor to achieve them. It is also stated that in the Vaikuṇṭha world the consorts of the residents are many, many times more beautiful than we can find in this material world, even in the higher planets. It is specifically mentioned here that a woman’s large hips are very attractive and they stimulate man’s passion, but the wonderful feature of Vaikuṇṭha is that although the women have large hips and beautiful faces and are decorated with ornaments of emeralds and jewels, the men are so absorbed in Kṛṣṇa consciousness that the beautiful bodies of the women cannot attract them. In other words, there is enjoyment of the association of the opposite sex, but there is no sexual relationship. The residents of Vaikuṇṭha have a better standard of pleasure, so there is no need of sex pleasure.

Maria managed to avoid Oliver for most of St. Valentine’s Day. It wasn’t difficult-apparently he spent half of it sleeping off his wild night. Not that she cared one bit. She’d learned her lesson with him. Truly she had. Not even the beautiful bouquet of irises he’d sent up to her room midafternoon changed that. Now that she was dressing for tonight’s ball, she was rather proud of herself for having only thought of him half a dozen times. Per hour, her conscience added. “There, that’s the last one,” Betty said as she tucked another ostrich feather into Maria’s elaborate coiffure. According to Celia, the new fashion this year involved a multitude of feathers drooping from one’s head in languid repose. Maria hoped hers didn’t decide to find their repose on the floor. Betty seemed to have used a magical incantation to keep them in place, and Maria wasn’t at all sure they would stay put. “You look lovely, miss,” Betty added. “If I do,” Maria said, “it’s only because of your efforts, Betty.” Betty ducked her head to hide her blush. “Thank you, miss.” It was amazing how different the servant had been ever since Maria had taken Oliver’s advice to heart, letting the girl fuss over her and tidy her room and do myriad things that Maria would have been perfectly happy to do for herself. But he’d proved to be right-Betty practically glowed with pride. Maria wished she’d known sooner how to treat them all, but honestly, how could she have guessed that these mad English would enjoy being in service? It boggled her democratic American mind. Casting an admiring glance down Maria’s gown of ivory satin, Betty said, “I daresay his lordship will swallow his tongue when he sees you tonight.” “If he does, I hope he chokes on it,” Maria muttered. With a sly glance, Betty fluffed out the bouffant drapery of white tulle that crossed Maria’s bust and was fastened in the center with an ornament of gold mosaic. “John says the master didn’t touch a one of those tarts at the brothel last night. He says that his lordship refused every female that the owner of the place brought before him.” “I somehow doubt that.” Paying her no heed, Betty continued her campaign to salvage her master’s dubious honor. “Then Lord Stoneville went to the opera house and left without a single dancer on his arm. John says he never done that before.” Maria rolled her eyes, though a part of her desperately wanted to believe it was true-a tiny, silly part of her that she would have to slap senseless. Betty polished the ornament with the edge of her sleeve. “John says he drank himself into a stupor, then came home without so much as kissing a single lady. John says-“ “John is inventing stories to excuse his master’s actions.” “Oh no, miss! John would never lie. And I can promise you that the master has never come home so early before, and certainly not without…that is, at the house in Acton he was wont to bring a tart or two home to…well, you know.” “Help him choke on his tongue?” Maria snapped as she picked up her fan. Betty laughed. “Now that would be a sight, wouldn’t it? Two ladies trying to shove his tongue down his throat.” “I’d pay them well to do it.

Stay there,’ said Mathis. He kicked back his chair and hurtled through the empty window-frame on to the pavement. 6 ....... TWO MEN IN STRAW HATS WHEN BOND left the bar he walked purposefully along the pavement flanking the tree-lined boulevard towards his hotel a few hundred yards away. He was hungry. The day was still beautiful, but by now the sun was very hot and the plane-trees, spaced about twenty feet apart on the grass verge between the pavement and the broad tarmac, gave a cool shade. There were few people abroad and the two men standing quietly under a tree on the opposite side of the boulevard looked out of place. Bond noticed them when he was still a hundred yards away and when the same distance separated them from the ornamental ‘porte cochère’ of the Splendide. There was something rather disquieting about their appearance. They were both small and they were dressed alike in dark and, Bond reflected, rather hot-looking suits. They had the appearance of a variety turn waiting for a bus on the way to the theatre. Each wore a straw hat with a thick black ribbon as a concession, perhaps, to the holiday atmosphere of the resort, and the brims of these and the shadow from the tree under which they stood obscured their faces. Incongruously, each dark, squat little figure was illuminated by a touch of bright colour. They were both carrying square camera-cases slung from the shoulder. And one case was bright red and the other case bright blue. By the time Bond had taken in these details, he had come to within fifty yards of the two men. He was reflecting on the ranges of various types of weapon and the possibilities of cover when an extraordinary and terrible scene was enacted.

Copulating Cats and Holy Men The Story of the Creation of the Book of Kells   In the year 791 A.D an Irish monk named Connachtach brought together a team of the finest calligraphers the world has ever seen, on the island of Iona, a sliver of limestone rock off the northwest coast of Scotland. They came from Northumbria in England, from Constantinople, from Italy and from Ireland. All of them had worked on other illuminated manuscripts. But Connachtach, eminent scribe and abbot of Iona, as he is described in contemporary annals, wanted from them the most richly ornamented book ever created by man’s hand. It was to be more beautiful than the great book of Lindisfarne: more beautiful than the gospel-books made at the court of Charlemagne: more beautiful than all the Korans of Persia. It would be known as the Book of Kells. Eighth century Europe was in a state of cultural meltdown. Since the end of the Pax Romana, three centuries earlier, warring tribes had decimated the continent. From the East the Ostrogoths had blundered into the spears of the Germanic tribes to be overrun, in their turn, by the Huns. Their western cousins, the Visigoths, plundered along a confident north- east, southwest axis from Spain to Cologne. The Vandals did what vandals do. As though that wasn't enough, a blunt-faced raggle-taggle band of pirates and pyromaniacs came looting and raping their way out of the freezing seas of the North. For a Viking there was no tomorrow, culture something you stuffed into a hemp sack; happiness, a warm sword. Wherever they went they extorted protection money: the Danegeld. Fighting drunk on a mixture of animist religion and aquavit they threatened to plunge the house of Europe into total darkness. The Book of Kells was to be a rainbow-bridge of light thrown across the abyss of the Dark Ages. Its colors were to burn until the end of time.   #

My father had a sister, Mady, who had married badly and ‘ruined her life.’ Her story was a classic. She had fallen in love before the war with an American adventurer, married him against her family’s wishes, and been disinherited by my grandfather. Mady followed her husband romantically across the sea. In America he promptly abandoned her. By the time my parents arrived in America Mady was already a broken woman, sick and prematurely old, living a life two steps removed from destitution. My father, of course, immediately put her on an allowance and made her welcome in his home. But the iron laws of Victorian transgression had been set in motion and it was really all over for Mady. You know what it meant for a woman to have been so disgraced and disinherited in those years? She had the mark of Cain on her. She would live, barely tolerated, on the edge of respectable society for the rest of her life. A year after we arrived in America, I was eleven years old, a cousin of mine was married out of our house. We lived then in a lovely brownstone on New York’s Upper West Side. The entire house had been cleaned and decorated for the wedding. Everything sparkled and shone, from the basement kitchen to the third-floor bedrooms. In a small room on the second floor the women gathered around the bride, preening, fixing their dresses, distributing bouquets of flowers. I was allowed to be there because I was only a child. There was a bunch of long-stemmed roses lying on the bed, blood-red and beautiful, each rose perfection. Mady walked over to them. I remember the other women were wearing magnificent dresses, embroidered and bejeweled. Mady was wearing only a simple white satin blouse and a long black skirt with no ornamentation whatever. She picked up one of the roses, sniffed deeply at it, held it against her face. Then she walked over to a mirror and held the rose against her white blouse. Immediately, the entire look of her plain costume was altered; the rose transferred its color to Mady’s face, brightening her eyes. Suddenly, she looked lovely, and young again. She found a long needle-like pin and began to pin the rose to her blouse. My mother noticed what Mady was doing and walked over to her. Imperiously, she took the rose out of Mady’s hand and said, ‘No, Mady, those flowers are for the bride.’ Mady hastily said, ‘Oh, of course, I’m sorry, how stupid of me not to have realized that,’ and her face instantly assumed its usual mask of patient obligation. “I experienced in that moment an intensity of pain against which I have measured every subsequent pain of life. My heart ached so for Mady I thought I would perish on the spot. Loneliness broke, wave after wave, over my young head and one word burned in my brain. Over and over again, through my tears, I murmured, ‘Unjust! Unjust!’ I knew that if Mady had been one of the ‘ladies’ of the house my mother would never have taken the rose out of her hand in that manner. The memory of what had happened in the bedroom pierced me repeatedly throughout that whole long day, making me feel ill and wounded each time it returned. Mady’s loneliness became mine. I felt connected, as though by an invisible thread, to her alone of all the people in the house. But the odd thing was I never actually went near her all that day. I wanted to comfort her, let her know that I at least loved her and felt for her. But I couldn’t. In fact, I avoided her. In spite of everything, I felt her to be a pariah, and that my attachment to her made me a pariah, also. It was as though we were floating, two pariahs, through the house, among all those relations, related to no one, not even to each other. It was an extraordinary experience, one I can still taste to this day. I was never again able to address myself directly to Mady’s loneliness until I joined the Communist Party. When I joined the Party the stifled memory of that strange wedding day came back to me. . .

The redeemed have all their objective good in God. God Himself is the great good which they are brought to the possession and enjoyment of by redemption. He is the highest good, and the sum of all that good which Christ purchased. God is the inheritance of the saints; he is the portion of their souls. God is their wealth and treasure, their food, their life, their dwelling place, their ornament and diadem, and their everlasting honor and glory. They have none in heaven but God; he is the great good which the redeemed are received to at death, and which they are to rise to at the end of the world. The Lord God, he is the light of the heavenly Jerusalem; and is the “river of the water of life” that runs, and the tree of life that grows, “in the midst of the paradise of God.” The glorious excellencies and beauty of God will be what will forever entertain the minds of the saints, and the love of God will be their everlasting feast. The redeemed will indeed enjoy other things; they will enjoy the angels, and will enjoy one another: but that which they shall enjoy in the angels, or each other, or in anything else whatsoever, that will yield them delight and happiness, will be what will be seen of God in them.*

But, we do not live in such a world. We see a vast diversity of sexual ornaments, most of which probably first arose as non-adaptive traits that exploited the sensory biases and aesthetic tastes of the other sex—pure sexual ornaments came before indicators, sensory pleasure before useful information, and beauty before reliability. This fact may be why sexual attraction carries such a sense of ineffable mystery and irreducible charm: sexual selection has transformed the most acute sensitivities and deepest desires of our nervous systems into the real bodies and minds of our lovers.

It is difficult, charming ladies, for us to know what is truly in our best interest. For, as we have frequently observed, there are many who have thought that if only they were rich, they would be able to lead secure, trouble-free lives, and they have not just prayed to God for wealth, but have made every effort to acquire it, sparing themselves neither effort nor danger in the process. However, no sooner did they succeed than the prospect of a substantial legacy led to their being murdered by people who would never have considered harming them before then. Others have risen from low estate to the heights of power, passing through the dangers of a thousand battles and shedding the blood of their brothers and friends to get there, all because of their belief that to rule was felicity itself. And yet, as they could have seen and heard for themselves, it was a felicity fraught with endless cares and fears, and when it cost them their lives, they finally realized that at the tables of royalty chalices may contain poison, even though they are made of gold. Again, there have been many who have ardently yearned for physical strength and beauty, while others have sought bodily ornaments with equal passion, only to discover that the things they unwisely desired were the cause of misery or even death. But to avoid reviewing every conceivable human desire, let me simply affirm that no person alive can choose any one of them in complete confidence that it will remain immune from the vicissitudes of Fortune.

The main rectangular swimming pool ran perpendicular to the house, which you wouldn't know because it was almost completely covered in a cloud of white. I walked closer, stunned at the beautiful lotus and water lily blooms floating beneath my feet. A glass aisle was laid across the center. You felt like you were walking---or sitting--- in a Monet painting. Complementary flowers lined the sides of the aisles, with chairs extending on either side of the now-concealed pool deck. I had no idea what wizardry kept the central flowers from floating freely, but my sister would walk down the aisle above a lush bed of white blossoms. Beside it, the ornamental gardens had been tented for the reception. Cedric had managed to integrate the existing stone sculptures (French, Greek, and Italian antiques, of course) into the design. Tables dotted the scene, covered in custom cream linens with Italian lace overlays. Cut crystal stemware and antique silverware donned each place setting and would sparkle later that evening from the glow cast down from the crystal chandeliers overhead. And the flowers. The all-white flowers also created a table-runner effect that filled the entire length of each table and spilled over and down the sides. A backdrop and stage had been erected at the end opposite the house, then covered in a cascade of white peonies and roses and mirrored by florals draped around the doorframes and windows of the back of our house. It was an enchanted garden, rivaling that of a royal wedding.

Three blocks east of the Frink National Bank stood the Dana Building. It was some stories lower and without any prestige whatever. Its lines were hard and simple, revealing, emphasizing the harmony of the steel skeleton within, as a body reveals the perfection of its bones. It had no other ornament to offer. It displayed nothing but the precision of its sharp angles, the modeling of its planes, the long streaks of its windows like streams of ice running down from the roof to the pavements. New Yorkers seldom looked at the Dana Building. Sometimes, a rare country visitor would come upon it unexpectedly in the moonlight and stop and wonder from what dream that vision had come. But such visitors were rare. The tenants of the Dana Building said that they would not exchange it for any structure on earth; they appreciated the light, the air, the beautiful logic of the plan in their halls and offices. But the tenants of the Dana Building were not numerous; no prominent man wished his business to be located in a building that looked “like a warehouse.

All day Annie had watched family members, friends, and neighbors wander around the garden, and she kept thinking how they were all like flowers. Some were poppies, blooming bold and brief. Others were like ornamental vines, passionflowers, or trumpets. Still others were shy violets and wallflowers. And all together, what a beautiful world they made. Everyone different, everyone amazing to behold.

This book is an ornament for the ages. It offers something for both the high and low. If you came sad and frozen to this book, its hidden fire will blaze and melt your ice. Yes, these verses are magic: they grow more potent with each reading. They are like beauty under a veil that reveals its loveliness slowly.

THE BUDDHISTS BELIEVE THAT every human life is like an ornament made of glass, something precious, beautiful, and bound to be destroyed. The trick is to see the world as a glass already shattered, freeing yourself from a life exhausted in dread of the moment of breaking.

Some drivers speed through red lights, afraid to idle at the corners. Whereas I take a distinctly guilty pleasure in the compaction of these decidedly ugly things, even find a certain beauty there: in the stillness, the tenuous light against the eroded geometry of the façades, the people who dare to walk around here at this hour, hands in pockets and heads bowed. There’s an extraordinary fixity in all this. Number

What's this? Must I be held enthralled Again, cruel skies, to fleeting dreams Of grandeur Time will surely mock? Must I again be forced to glimpse Amid the shadows and the fog The majesty and faded pomp That waft inconstant on the wind? Must I again be left to face Life's disillusion or the risks To which man's limits are exposed From birth and never truly end? This cannot be. It cannot be. Behold me here, a slave again To fortune's whims. As I have learned That life is really just a dream, I say to you, false shadows, Go! My deadened senses know your schemes, To feign a body and a voice When voice and body both are shams. I've no desire for majesty That's phony or for pompous flam, Illusions of sheer fantasy That can't withstand the slightest breeze And dissipate entirely like The blossoms on an almond tree That bloom too early in the spring Without a hint to anyone. The beauty, light, and ornament Reflecting from their rosy buds Fade all too soon; these wilt and fall When but the gentlest gusts blow by. I know you all too well, I do, To fancy you'd act otherwise Toward other souls who likewise sleep. So let this vain pretending cease; I'm disabused of all I thought And know now life is but a dream

Er… this is Rikke. The beautiful and mysterious Witch of the North!” Orso attempted an ornamental flourish, as though she was being presented to the throne rather than caught in his bed, and Rikke coughed and almost blew bread out of her nose. “She is an emissary from the Protectorate.” Rikke wasn’t sure whether he’d made her look better or the Protectorate worse. She took the bread out of her mouth, shut it, then pinched the sheet between finger and thumb and ever so gradually pulled it up over her tits. The queen made an arch of one perfect brow. “When it comes to building close diplomatic ties with the future King of the Union, one cannot fault her commitment.

Kitsch can also be in the eye: “The sunset looks like a painting!” Because artifice is now the ultimate standard, the original (sunset) has to be turned into a fake (painting), so that the latter may provide the measure of the former’s beauty. Kitsch is always a form of inverted Platonism, prizing imitation over archetype. And in every case, it’s related to an inflation of aesthetic value, as seen in the worst kind of kitsch: “classy” kitsch. Solemn, ornamental, grand.

Vasey’s Paradise was special. Above them, freshwater springs leapt out of the limestone and unraveled long, twisting ribbons. At a glance they could see the dominant species: Western redbud, scarlet monkeyflower, and “gobs” of poison ivy. Clear rivulets of water chattered and burbled from beneath this verdant tangle, licked with streamers of algae and moss and more beautifully arranged than any ornamental garden. Powell had looked at this spot with a geologist’s eyes, describing the sun-struck fountains as “a million brilliant gems,” but he named it after a botanist, George Vasey. Vasey never boated the Grand Canyon, nor saw the place that bore his name. Clover and Jotter were the first botanists to make a catalog of the plants there for Western science.

In the last decade and a half a revival of plant behavior research had brought countless new realizations to botany, more than forty years after an irresponsible best-selling book nearly snuffed out the field for good. The Secret Life of Plants, published in 1973, captured the public imagination on a global scale. Written by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, the book was a mix of real science, flimsy experiments, and unscientific projection. In one chapter, Tompkins and Bird suggested that plants could feel and hear—and that they preferred Beethoven to rock and roll. In another, a former CIA agent named Cleve Backster hooked up a polygraph test to his houseplant and imagined the plant being set on fire. The polygraph needle went wild, which would mean the plant was experiencing a surge in electrical activity. In humans, a reading like that was believed to denote a surge of stress. The plant, according to Backster, was responding to his malevolent thoughts. The implication was that there existed not only a sort of plant consciousness but also plant mind-reading. The book was an immediate and meteoric success on the popular market, surprising for a book about plant science. Paramount put out a feature film about it. Stevie Wonder wrote the soundtrack. The first pressings of the album version were sent out scented with floral perfume. To its many astonished readers, the book offered a new way to view the plants all around them, which up until then had seemed ornamental, passive, more akin to the world of rocks than animals. It also aligned with the advent of New Age culture, which was ready to inhale stories about how plants were as alive as we are. People began talking to their houseplants, and leaving classical music playing for their ficus when they went out. But it was a beautiful collection of myths.

Look at me," she said, throwing wide her arms, appearing vulnerable, beautiful, helpless. "Do you know what I am? I am a pretty, useless ornament who always believed she'd have a man to take care of her.

when you are a beautiful boy I am a girl and when you are a girl I am a girl again. Love takes to the female form. When your arm is bare, I become an ornament. When I am naked you become my clothing. Your body being the only fashion I wish for. You, are a pool of raindrops and I am a thirsty man. You are the song bird’s melody and I am all ear, all ear. It is a strange love, no matter how many songs I sing I will never know the all of you - you are the supreme master of revealing and concealing. the form of the one I love is everywhere everything. Eyes remaining closed I fall into the Heart and silence engulfs …there, in the nothingness openness, there you are again –you are the darkened rain cloud and I have thrown away my umbrella. Love is that way. - t.k.

Natural beauty, for Darwin, was not just aesthetic; it always reflected function and adaptation at work. Orchids were not just ornamental, to be displayed in a garden or a bouquet; they were wonderful contrivances, examples of nature’s imagination, natural selection, at work. Flowers required no Creator, but were wholly intelligible as products of accident and selection, of tiny incremental changes extending over hundreds of millions of years. This, for Darwin, was the meaning of flowers, the meaning of all adaptations, plant and animal, the meaning of natural selection.

Jack’s fingers closed around her shoulders. Jane could feel his labored breaths, the ragged movement of his chest. “You show up looking like that—wearing his dress, his jewels, his perfumes. What in the hell am I supposed to think?” He released her, stepping back. “My congratulations, Countess. You’ll make a beautiful ornament at the court of Louis the Eighteenth.” Jane had always prided herself on her ability to retain her poise, even in the most grueling of circumstances. But she was frustrated, humiliated, hurt, and just plain furious. Jane poked Jack in the chest with her index finger. It felt good, so she did it again. “Would you like to know just how many times I’ve told Nicolas no? By last count, approximately thirty-seven. Not that it’s any of your concern. You see, he, like you, seems to believe that I don’t know what is best for me.” Jack grabbed her hand before she could poke him again. “He can give you everything I can’t. He can give you riches, titles, a place in the world.” Jane jerked her hand away. “I have my place in the world! I made it myself, with my own hard work.” And error, a great deal of error. She braced her hands against Jack’s shoulders, holding herself away to look at his face. “Have I ever—ever—given you any indication that I desire titles or riches?” “Not in so many words, no . . .” Jack’s fingers itched to close around her waist and draw her close. Everything that had seemed so clear ten minutes ago was murky and blurry. He knew he had a point, but he was no longer entirely sure what that point was. He retreated a step, his back hitting the whitewashed stone of the wall. Jane stalked forward, cornering him. Jack could feel the rough stone biting into his back as Jane glared at him, her chest right beneath his nose. “I don’t want to be placed on a pedestal. I don’t want to be the ornament of anyone’s court. And I certainly don’t want a lute beneath my window!” She had told him that, hadn’t she? Jack was beginning to feel rather less sure of himself. The Gardener, that proposal, felt very far away, and Jane was very near.

used to enjoy climbing up the cathedral towers to get a close view of the ornamentation at the top, a veritable lacework of stone that must have been the result of very patient and laborious craftsmanship. As I chatted with the young men who accompanied me I used to point out that none of the beauty of this work could be seen from below. To give them a material lesson in what I had been previously explaining to them, I would say: ‘This is God’s work, this is working for God! – to finish your personal work perfectly, with all the beauty and exquisite refinement of this tracery stonework.’ Seeing it, my companions would understand that all the work we had seen was part of a prayer, a loving dialogue with God. The men who spent their energies up there were quite aware that no one at street level could appreciate their efforts. Their work was for God alone. Now do you see how our professional work can bring us close to Our Lord? Do your job as those medieval stonemasons did theirs, and your work too will be ‘operatio Dei’, a human work with a divine substance and finish.[601]

The afternoon began with Greek. It was the Rector who taught them (…). He had the most beautiful Greek handwriting you could imagine; he drew the letters ceremonially, and the loops especially – as in Omega or Theta, or when pulled the Eta down – were the purest calligraphy. He loved Greek. But he loved it in the wrong way; thought Gregorius at the back of the classroom. His way of loving it was a conceited way. It wasn’t by celebrating the words. If it had been that –Gregorius would have liked it. But when this man wrote out the most difficult verb forms, he celebrated not the words, but rather himself as one who knew them. The words thus became ornaments to him, he adorned himself with them, they turned into something like the polka dotted bow tie he wore year in, year out

The crops, however, I examine closely, to see what each bird has been feeding upon. Clover. Kinnickkinnick. Snowberries. Wheat. Barley. Crickets. Grasshoppers. Fir needles. Huckleberries. Rose hips. The crops filled with snowberries are breathtaking, looking like a clump of pearls, and nearly as rare; it’s always a thrill to open a crop and see nothing but beautiful white berries. Usually in these woods, though, in the autumn, the crops are bulging with bright red kinnickkinnick berries, and the bright green leaves from the same bush. Tom and Nancy save the crop from each bird they kill and set it on the windowsill to dry translucent in the sunlight—a globe, a ball, filled with Christmas colors, perfect red and green; and then in December they hang these as ornaments on their tree. For

The Earth reminded us of a Christmas tree ornament hanging in the blackness of space. As we got farther and farther away it diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful marble you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man, has to make a man appreciate the creation of God and the love of God.17—Astronaut James Irwin 2.

the beauty of human sexuality by enhancing the draw of seduction through ornamentation and cosmetics. It was a particular talent of hers to twist a good thing into something bad. Women and men learned how to advertise more clearly the availability of their bodies for the fulfillment of illicit desires in violation of Elohim’s bigoted exclusionary marriage covenant.

I consider a human soul without education like marble in the quarry, which shows none of its inherent beauties till the skill of the polisher fetches out the colors, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot and vein that runs through the body of it and hence the paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. Help Dacodep showcase the potential of orphan children and illiterate adults in the community flooded with politicians, we are working to turn Bondo into an education hub.

only sport known to have inspired an indignant left-wing poem. It was written by one Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn in 1915. The golf links lie so near the mill That almost every day The laboring children can look out And see the men at play. Just show me an indignant left-wing poem about softball or bungee jumping. And our local mill has been converted to a shopping mall, so the kids are still there. Golf is also the only sport God is known to play. God and Saint Peter are out on Sunday morning. On the first hole God drives into a water hazard. The waters part and God chips onto the green. On the second hole God takes a tremendous whack and the ball lands ten feet from the pin. There’s an earthquake, one side of the green rises up, and the ball rolls into the cup. On the third hole God lands in a sand trap. He creates life. Single-cell organisms develop into fish and then amphibians. Amphibians crawl out of the ocean and evolve into reptiles, birds, and furry little mammals. One of those furry little mammals runs into the sand trap, grabs God’s ball in its mouth, scurries over, and drops it in the hole. Saint Peter looks at God and says, “You wanna play golf or you wanna fuck around?” And golf courses are beautiful. Many people think mature men have no appreciation for beauty except in immature women. This isn’t true, and, anyway, we’d rather be playing golf. A golf course is a perfect example of Republican male aesthetics—no fussy little flowers, no stupid ornamental shrubs, no exorbitant demands for alimony, just acre upon acre of lush green grass that somebody else has to mow. Truth, beauty, and even poetry are to be found in golf. Every man, when he steps up to the tee, feels, as Keats has it … Like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men Look’d at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien. That is, the men were silent. Cortez was saying, “I can get on in two, easy. A three-wood drive, a five-iron from the fairway, then a two-putt max. But if I hook it, shit, I’m in the drink.” EAT THE RICH

When ornaments betray a beauty, she is old.

Virtue ornaments beauty, conduct ornaments lineage, perfection ornaments knowledge, enjoyment ornaments wealth.

Kitsch. Can’t think of Engl. trans. for this word. A copy that’s so proud of how close it comes to the original that it believes there’s more worth in this closeness than in originality itself. “It looks just like . . . !” Imposture of feeling over actual emotion; sentimentality over sentiment. Kitsch can also be in the eye: “The sunset looks like a painting!” Because artifice is now the ultimate standard, the original (sunset) has to be turned into a fake (painting), so that the latter may provide the measure of the former’s beauty. Kitsch is always a form of inverted Platonism, prizing imitation over archetype. And in every case, it’s related to an inflation of aesthetic value, as seen in the worst kind of kitsch: “classy” kitsch. Solemn, ornamental, grand. Ostentatiously, arrogantly announcing its divorce from authenticity.

wigs atop the disembodied heads of mannequins. My own hair is not on display yet, which I suppose makes sense. It must take time to create a wig. “Also, you should know,” Helga adds, “that all of our wigs come with a set of ornamental combs.” She digs around in a chest by the wigs until she pulls out a small box. I open it up, and inside is the most beautiful set of tortoiseshell combs. It is the loveliest Christmas gift I could imagine. Helga squints up at me with her cloudy pupils. “Do you want to be blond again?” “No,” I say thoughtfully. I run my hand through one of the red wigs. I wonder what I’d look like wearing it. People probably wouldn’t even recognize me. “I think it’s time for a change, don’t you?” She clears her throat. “What do you wish to trade for one of my wigs?” I reach into my pocket. I pull out a pocket watch with a silver chain attached to it and hold it out to her. “This is a lovely piece.” She clutches the chain of the watch with her gnarled hands. She runs her thumb over the glass cover, halting on

But I want to extol not the sweetness nor the placidity of the dog, but the wilderness out of which he cannot step entirely, and from which we benefit. For wilderness is our first home too, and in our wild ride into modernity with all its concerns and problems we need also all the good attachments to that origin that we can keep or restore. Dog is one of the messengers of that rich and still magical first world. The dog would remind us of the pleasures of the body with its graceful physicality, and the acuity and rapture of the senses, and the beauty of forest and ocean and rain and our own breath. There is not a dog that romps and runs but we learn from him. The other dog—the one that all its life walks leashed and obedient down the sidewalk—is what a chair is to a tree. It is a possession only, the ornament of a human life. Such dogs can remind us of nothing large or noble or mysterious or lost. They cannot make us sweeter or more kind. Only unleashed dogs can do that. They are a kind of poetry themselves when they are devoted not only to us but to the wet night, to the moon and the rabbit-smell in the grass and their own bodies leaping forward.

For Loveliness, Needs not the foreign aid of ornament, But is, when unadorned, adorned the most

Maester,” said Lady Melisandre, her deep voice flavored with the music of the Jade Sea. “You ought take more care.” As ever, she wore red head to heel, a long loose gown of flowing silk as bright as fire, with dagged sleeves and deep slashes in the bodice that showed glimpses of a darker bloodred fabric beneath. Around her throat was a red gold choker tighter than any maester’s chain, ornamented with a single great ruby. Her hair was not the orange or strawberry color of common red-haired men, but a deep burnished copper that shone in the light of the torches. Even her eyes were red … but her skin was smooth and white, unblemished, pale as cream. Slender she was, graceful, taller than most knights, with full breasts and narrow waist and a heart-shaped face. Men’s eyes that once found her did not quickly look away, not even a maester’s eyes. Many called her beautiful. She was not beautiful. She was red, and terrible, and red. “I … thank you, my lady.” “A man your age must look to where he steps,” Melisandre said courteously. “The night is dark and full of terrors.

Be careful before you carelessly discard any precept of the Lord. Every word he has spoken to you is more precious than a diamond. Prize it. Store it up. Wear it. Let it be your ornament and your beauty.

Then, suddenly, all thoughts of the troublesome third stage fell away, because in that moment he saw something much, much grander. He saw the Earth. It was a view that American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts had seen from space many times before, but in those cases, the planet had been a broad arc, too big to fit into the aperture of a window because it was too close. Now, however, Borman, Lovell, and Anders could see the planet floating alone, unsupported, in space. The Earth was no longer the soil beneath their feet or the horizon below their spacecraft. It was an almost complete disk of light suspended in front of them, a delicate Christmas tree ornament made of swirls of blue and white glass. It looked impossibly beautiful—and impossibly breakable. What Borman said aloud was: “What a view!

The goals of taking this insidious elision between the Oriental and the ornamental as the foundation for a yellow feminist theory are, therefore: (1) to detach us from the ideal of a natural and an agential personhood that invariably accompanies critiques of power and from which the Asiatic woman is already always foreclosed; (2) to take seriously what it means to live as an object, an aesthetic supplement; (3) to attend to peripheral and alternative modes of ontology and survival; (4) and finally, to contend that the discourse of Asiatic femininity—at once pervasive and marginal, enhancing and disparaging, dated and yet contemporary—is part of a much larger debate about beauty and violence, as well as about life and artificiality, nestled in the making of modern Euro-American personhood.

Porcelain thus connoted both hardness and plasticity, old-world beauty and new-world technology, fragile daintiness and insensate coolness: a mixture of antithetical symbolic meanings that are then ascribed to, indeed, become the very “stuff” of Asiatic femininity.

China is indeed favored by the gods to have such a lovely blossom grace its throne.” Out of the corner of her eye, Mulan saw Shang’s expression darken. She too heard the insult in those words. Flowers were beautiful and delicate. Ornamental. She bared her teeth in a thin smile. “I’m quite fond of flowers myself. After your’e settled in the state guesthouses, you must tour the imperial gardens. There’s a particular variety called snow lace, a white blossom with rose-tinged petals. I collected it myself from the Tung-Shao Pass. Are you familiar with that region?” The ambassador’s smirk froze on his face. The Tung-Shao Pass was where Mulan’s regiment had defeated Shan Yu’s men. There were already multiple ballads commemorating how Mulan used a rocket to trigger the avalanche that buried his entire army. “Yes, I am familiar with that pass.” “I’m glad,” said Mulan. “It’s the mark of a good ambassador to know his host nation’s land and history, and I’m sure you are one of the very best.

Thus ornament is but the guiled shore to a most dangerous sea.

Like tender fawn's her eye; Clothed on is she with modesty; What added beauty can be lent; By alien ornament?. Explanation Of what use are other jewels to her who is adorned with modesty, and the meek looks of a hind ?. Transliteration Pinaiyer Matanokkum Naanum Utaiyaatku Aniyevano Edhila Thandhu குறள்: 1090 உண்டார்கண் அல்லது அடுநறாக் காமம்போல் கண்டார் மகிழ்செய்தல் இன்று.

it was a combination of beauty and strength that made southern women “whiskey in a teacup.” We may be delicate and ornamental on the outside, she said, but inside we’re strong and fiery. Our famous hospitality isn’t martyrdom; it’s modeling. True southern women treat everyone the way we want to be treated: with grace and respect—no matter where they come from or how different from you they may be.

At the entrance to the park stands a painted sign depicting two women. The one on the left wears a long black manteau and wimple, dark trousers and shoes; the figure on the right wears all of this plus a chaador overtop. Both figures are faceless. The rest of the sign is in writing. I ask Hamid what it means. "Our sign tell that this one-" Hamid points to the woman on the left "-is good, it is cloth Islamic. But our sign tells that this-" he taps his finger against the chaadored figure on the right "-is very much good dressing, most beautiful, way of God." "At the bottom of the sign there is, inexplicably, and English translation: Veil is ornament of women modesty. The smelling flower of chastity bush.

Now we know that man is more than two million years old,' exlaimed Heyerdahl, 'it would be very strange if our ancestors lived like primitive food collectors for all that time until suddenly they started in the Nile valley, in Mesopotamia and even in the Indus valley, to build a civilization at peak level pretty much at the same time. And there's a question I ask that I never get an answer to. The tombs from the first kingdom of Sumer are full of beautiful ornaments and treasures made of gold, silver, platinum, and semi-precious stones -- things you don't find in Mesopotamia. All you find there is mud and water -- good for planting but not much else. How did they suddenly learn -- in that one generation just about -- where to go to find gold and all these other things? To do that they must have known the geography of wide areas, and that takes time. So there must have been something before.

It was the most beautiful but curious, ornament I had ever seen. I couldn't take my eyes off it.

It's as if all the beauties of the world were put there like an ornament to make us forget death!

Who could tell,” continues Procopius, “of the beauty of the columns and marbles with which the church is adorned? One would think that one had come upon a meadow full of flowers in bloom. Who would not admire the purple tints of some and the green of others, the glowing red and glittering white, and those too which nature, like a painter, has marked with the strongest contrasts of color?” Unfortunately, since the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, much of this wonderful coloring and ornamentation has been covered with Mohammedan whitewash.

A century after its introduction, Eucalyptus stelloleta, a tree planted worldwide for lumber and ornamental purposes, supports only one species in California but 48 species of insects in its Australian homeland according to D. Strong and colleagues.

Twould take me half a lifetime to describe to you the wonders and the horrors of the future world. The garderobe, what they call the ODEC, is housed within a large chamber—a strange room with mechanical monstrosities and a dreadful buzz in the air as if lightning were always just about to strike, a sound they are all indifferent to, much as I became indifferent to the odors of Southwark. And this chamber in turn is inside a vast building, which is on a street full of vast buildings, in a city of streets with vast buildings. Larger than cathedrals some of them, but without ornament or even shape. Like building blocks for giants, so they are. No imagination or love of beauty at all. Everything functions without human or magical assistance, but I confess most breathlessly that whatever power keeps humanity and its many mechanical servants humming . . . it is far more dazzling than any magic I have ever seen performed. And I tell you straight out: suspicious this makes me, for what is the cause to bring magic back when it has been replaced by something clearly more serviceable? So the first riddle I put my mind to was this: in a world where carriages travel without beasts to pull them, and food is effortlessly abundant, and there is ample light to sunder any darkness, from all manner of peculiar torches, none of them given to burning down a place even if it is all wood, and where all and sundry wear grander clothes than most anyone in London and an astonishing variety what’s more . . . something there must be, some commodity or advantage, that magic can attain but mankind cannot yet. Nothing material can it be, for no magic I ever knew summoned such luxuries for royalty as everyday folk here take as commonplace.

The word ‘wrong’ originally meant wrung, twisted. ‘Abstract’ means to pull away from. ‘Human’ meant the soil (humus). ‘Consider’ meant known, con, the stars, sidera. All our abstract words were once metaphors. The boldness of metaphor is a result of limited vocabulary… As language became less crude it became less beautiful, more refined, more abstract—and metaphor became either impossible or ornamental and unnecessary, except in rare instances.

The lobby was full. Magnus Ridolph contemplated the other occupants of the room. Where did these various men and women, near-men and near-women, originate? What were their purposes, what had brought them to the Hub? That rotund moon-faced bonze in the stiff red robe, for instance. He was a native of the planet Padme, far across the galaxy: why had he ventured so far from home? And the tall angular man whose narrow shaved skull carried a fantastic set of tantalum ornaments: a Lord of the Dacca. Exiled? In pursuit of an enemy? On some mad crusade? And the anthrope from the planet Hecate sitting by himself: a walking argument to support the theory of parallel evolution. His outward semblance caricatured humanity; internally he was as far removed as a gastropod. His head was bleached bone and black shadow, his mouth a lipless slit. He was a Meth of Maetho, and Magnus Ridolph knew his race to be gentle and diffident, with so little mental contact with human beings as to seem ambiguous and secretive … Magnus Ridolph focused his gaze on a woman, and was taken aback by her miraculous beauty. She was dark and slight, with a complexion the color of clean desert sand; she carried herself with a self-awareness that was immensely provoking …

You feel downhearted and ashamed, because your sister Pauline is not rich, because she possesses nothing but her beauty and her name: but be of good cheer, she will one day be the wife of the wealthiest prince of Italy; all the treasures of art will be gathered in her palace, and yet she will be the most precious ornament of that palace!

Do not adorn yourselves outwardly by braiding your hair, and by wearing gold ornaments or fine clothing; 4rather, let your adornment be the inner self with the lasting beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in God's sight. 5It was in this way long ago that the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves by accepting the authority of their husbands.

To a European brought up on Greek and aristocratic canons of moderation and simplicity, this popular art of profuse ornament and wild complexity will seem at times almost primitive and barbarous. But that last word is the very adjective with which the classically-minded Goethe rejected Strasbourg’s cathedral and the Gothic style; it is the reaction of reason to feeling, of rationalism to religion. Only a native believer can feel the majesty of the Hindu temples, for these were built to give not merely a form to beauty but a stimulus to piety and a pedestal to faith. Only our Middle Ages—only our Giottos and our Dantes—could understand India.

Pope Leo X once sang the praises of science (in his brief to Beroaldo18): he called it the most beautiful ornament and the greatest pride of our life and a noble occupation in times of happiness as well as unhappiness;

In contrast to the richly ornamented chamber, the queen sat simply robed in a long-sleeved lavender tunic, hair unbound as her handmaiden worked aromatic oils into the long tresses. Unadorned as she was, stripped of cosmetics and jewelry, she seemed the most beautiful creature Roxannah had ever laid eyes on. Tall and willowy, she turned with swanlike grace to watch them bow.

Love is an ornament you wear for occasions with beauty of life.

I, as I am this minute, am the resultant of all I have done, all I have thought. Every action and every thought has had its effect, and these effects are the sum-total of my progress. The problem becomes difficult. We all understand that desires are wrong, but what is meant by giving up desires? How can life go on? It would be the same suicidal advice, which means killing the desire and the patient too. So, the answer comes. Not that you should not have property, not that you should not have things which are necessary, and things which are even luxuries. Have all that you want, and everything that you do not want sometimes, only know the truth and realize the truth. This wealth does not belong to anybody. Have no idea of proprietorship, possessorship. You are nobody, nor am I, nor anyone else. It all belongs to the Lord, because the opening verse told us to put the Lord in everything. God is in that wealth that you enjoy, He is in the desire that rises in your mind, He is in these things you buy because you desire them; He is in your beautiful attire, in your handsome ornaments. That is the line of thought. All will be metamorphosed as soon as you begin to see things in that light. If you put God in your every movement, in your clothes, in your talk, in your body, in your mind, in everything, the whole scene changes, and the world, instead of appearing as woe and misery, will become a heaven.

After about a minute, we emerged into an estate that could have been described as a kingdom in itself. Moxham Hall was a sprawling, nineteenth-century manor surrounded by perfectly striped lawns reaching as far as a low metal railing. Miles of grassland stretched out on the other side, different shades of green rising and falling over hills and continuing as far as the eye could see. As we swung round an improbable white marble fountain – Neptune holding a trident, fighting off an army of cupids and dolphins – my eyes took in rose gardens, ornamental gardens, vegetable gardens and rockeries. And there was the famous helicopter pad, a white H stamped into a circle of mauve asphalt. My first impression was that the house was beautiful, with its patterned brick and limestone façade, the rows of symmetrical windows, the grey tiles and chimneys. But as we drew closer, I noticed the modern additions: the out-of-scale conservatory, the fake portico around the front door, the glass and steel shell surrounding the swimming pool. There was something a little soulless about Moxham Hall. I could imagine it being rented out as a posh wedding venue. It wasn’t somewhere I would want to live.

Art and Craft: A Journey of Creativity and Expression Craft is the skill to create things with your hands and creative resources. Paper folding, furnishing, painting, cutting shapes, recycling, fabric crafts, and plenty other activities are all included. Art and Craft is present in every location, including homes, workplaces, festivals, and schools. It inspires creativity and teaches how to transform everyday things into beautiful creations. Art and Craft is a bright, imaginative, and colorful the cosmos. It enables people of all ages to use basic materials like paper, glue, cloth, and more to express their thoughts. At The Force Strike, we think that crafting is a great method to foster creativity, confidence, and skill development in addition to being a fun pastime. For this reason, we feel happy to present Art and Craft after school programme by The Force Strike, our unique curriculum. What You Will Learn Background IconBackground Icon Here’s a list of exciting topics and activities included in the Art and Craft after school programme by The ForceStrike: Paper Crafts Paper flowers, greeting cards, and origami (paper folding) Paper shapes and animals; ornamental wall hangings Recycled Craft Eco-friendly home décor goods; crafts made from used boxes, bottles, and newspapers; and best-out-of-waste activities Festival & Seasonal Crafts Making Rakhi, Diwali lanterns and diyas, and Christmas ornaments Ideas for birthday decorations School Project Models Models of the solar system, water cycle, volcanoes, and cities Innovative presentation boards Benefits of Art and Craft Learning at The Force Strike Background IconBackground Icon A stress-free setting that fosters creativity Through projects, gain experience in time management and planning. Improve motor skills, especially in younger students. All ability levels can benefit from it, from total novices to imaginative students. Appreciation of each student's work Who Can Join? The Art and Craft after school programme is open to: Kids (ages 5 and above) School and college students Moms or homemakers who enjoy creativity No experience or special background is needed—just the love of making things!

Beautiful, on the other hand, is generally defined with a focus on pleasing the senses or being ornamental.

Folks need summat beautiful too … Not like an ornament. But beauty they can feel inside of them.