Beauty is the combination of qualities as shape, proportion, colour, in human face or form or in other objects that delight the sight and other senses.
Examples are: a beautiful face, a beautiful voice, a beautiful picture. In architecture the beauty is in the line and design,” in painting, in the form and colour in works of fine art, in the craftsmanship.
According to L.B. Albert beauty is “the adjustment of all parts proportionately so that one cannot add or subtract or change without impairing the harmony of the whole.”
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ means that beauty exists only in the consciousness of those who see it. If anything delights the sight of one person then it is beautiful to him! if the same thing does not delight the sight of another person, then it is not beautiful to him. Every one to his taste!
Beauty and what is repugnant are the two basic element of life itself. V.M. Garshan (1885-1888) relates an illuminating anecdote: A young disciple once asked the stage manager: “Master, what is life?”
In silence the master turned back the soiled sleeve of his sack cloth burnoose and showed the disciple a resulting sore that was eating his arm. And at that very time the nightingales were trilling in full song and all Seville was fragrant with the sweet odor of roses.
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In life beauty is of fundamental importance. Take it away, and you are left only with the hideous, the repulsive and the ugly. You will become indifferent and callous to your environment, spiteful, angry, upset, jittery.
According to Dr. W. W. Dyer, beauty is not a luxury but an imperative need, “without it the organism suffers just as much as if it is denied sleep or shelter even though the results of the deficiency take longer to manifest themselves.
Beauty makes you healthy, and excited about being alive. There is an ancient Chinese saying ‘that if there were no flowers and moon and beautiful women, he would not want to be born in this world.’ Keats aptly said:
A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Its loveliness increases! it will never go Pass into nothingness Masterpieces of painting, music, architecture like Taj Mahal, the picture of Mona Lisa, are perennial springs of joy to the contemplator and appreciator of beauty, Einstein said, “The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully have been Kindness, Beauty and Truth.” In her ‘Diary of a young Girl’ Anne Frank wrote, “Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.”
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So long as there is a gleam of beauty there is hope cheering and adorning our way. Hope may deceive you; beauty will never let you down.
Poets who have the gift of a keen sense of beauty go into raptures over works of beauty. Robert Bridges writes:
I love all beauteous things,
I seek and adore them; God hath no better praise, And man in his hasty day, Is honoured for them. Wordsworth writes: My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow inUhe sky.
Beauty is also cathartic like drama. In short, appreciation of beauty is a key factor in the achievement of happiness, adds a zest to living positively and makes the earth a more cheerful place to live in. Considering the role of beauty in life it is most desirable to cultivate an aesthetic sense. Here is as to how:
Beautify your environment adding colour to it. “With colour”, says Matisse “one obtains energy which seems to stem from witchcraft. Make home life as beautiful as possible. Visit art galleries and museums, music halls and musicales frequently.
Drink deep the multifarious beauty of nature: the kaleidoscopic landscape, the variegated flowers with infinite variety of fragrance of trees lovely as poems, the orchestral bird music, the symphony of seasons, the romantic and operatic enchantment of the sky:
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon
The golden apples of the sun.
What Keats calls ‘the poetry of earth’ is sheer ecstasy and everlasting.
Follow the golden rule given by William Morris in his ‘The Beauty of Life’
‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.’
Don’t be finicky about beauty being only skin-deep. That’s deep enough. That’s after all beauty.
Don’t turn up your nose at things of beauty because they are not useful. A lily and a peacock are amongst the gems of beauty even if of no worldly use.
Famous movie producer, Samuel Goldwyn, was looking for a young actress to play a role in forthcoming picture “The girl who plays this part must have a wholesome natural beauty”, he told an assistant. “She must have the green of the trees in her eyes, the snow of the mountain top in her teeth, the blush of the rose on her cheek”.
But Mr. Goldwyn, protested the assistant, “there is no such thing as a natural beauty in Hollywood” “All right then,” said the producer, “We will use a little make-up”.