Beauty is an outward gift which is seldom despised except by those to whom it has been refused.—­Gibbon.

What is beauty?  Not the show
Of shapely limbs and features.  No. 
These are but flowers
That have their dated hours
To breathe their momentary sweets, then go. 
’Tis the stainless soul within
That outshines the fairest skin. 
—­Sir A. Hunt.

I pray Thee, O God, that I may be beautiful within.—­Socrates.

Happily there exists more than one kind of beauty.  There is the beauty of infancy, the beauty of youth, the beauty of maturity, and, believe me, ladies and gentlemen, the beauty of age.—­G.A.  Sala.

There is no beauty on earth which exceeds the natural loveliness of woman.—­J.  Petit-Senn.

There is a self-evident axiom, that she who is born a beauty is half married.—­Ouida.

Beauty attracts us men, but if, like an armed magnet it is pointed with gold or silver beside, it attracts with tenfold power.—­Richter.

If thou marry beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that which, perchance, will neither last nor please thee one year.—­Raleigh.

It is seldom that beautiful persons are otherwise of great virtue.  —­Bacon.

The most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth.  —­Shaftesbury.

Every year of my life I grow more convinced that it is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful and good and dwell as little as possible on the dark and the base.—­Cecil.

A woman possessing nothing but outward advantages is like a flower without fragrance, a tree without fruit.—­Regnier.

All orators are dumb, when beauty pleadeth.—­Shakespeare.

Who has not experienced how, on near acquaintance, plainness becomes beautified, and beauty loses its charm, exactly according to the quality of the heart and mind?  And from this cause am I of opinion that the want of outward beauty never disquiets a noble nature or will be regarded as a misfortune.  It never can prevent people from being amiable and beloved in the highest degree.—­Frederika Bremer.

Good nature will always supply the absence of beauty; but beauty cannot supply the absence of good nature.—­Addison.

There should be, methinks, as little merit in loving a woman for her beauty as in loving a man for his prosperity; both being equally subject to change.—­Pope.

Socrates called beauty a short-lived tyranny; Plato, a privilege of nature; Theophrastus, a silent cheat; Theocritus, a delightful prejudice; Carneades, a solitary kingdom; Domitian said, that nothing was more grateful; Aristotle affirmed that beauty was better than all the letters of recommendation in the world; Homer, that ’twas a glorious gift of nature, and Ovid, alluding to him, calls it a favor bestowed by the gods.—­From the Italian.