Can anyone paint the living, breathing soul of a very young and beautiful person? No! If a man had the genius to do so, the very enthusiasm which always attends it would throw him into a very unpainter like raptures at the sight of such a one. Why is beauty given us, unless it be like sunlight to bless a gladden World? Beauty is given to remind us that the soul should be kept as fair and perfect in its proportions as the temple in which it dwells. The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has remained unknown to us till she appeared. The mystery which underlies the beauty of a women is never raised above the reach of all expressions until it has claimed kindred with the deeper mystery in our own souls. Nothing in nature is there required to make a woman handsome, but eyes. I have the money and want the beauty; but as times go now, the first will do, so I have the better of my neighbors. Guard against the mischiefs which attend an early knowledge of your own beauty. If a young woman once thinks herself handsome, she never doubts the truth of any man that tells her he is in love with her. Beauty’s a portion, and good humor with it is a double portion. Cheerfulness and content are great beautifiers, and are famous preservers of youthful looks. Alas! How few of Nature’s faces are left alone to gladden us with their beauty!

 All beauty is sexless in the eyes of the artist at his work. There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles, from the desperate to the sheepish; but there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief, a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you. Human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the Earth: it does not wait for beauty, it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it. All honor and reverence to the divine of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women, and children, it our gardens and in our houses. However, let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret of proportion, but in the secret of deep human sympathy. The beauty of a lovely woman is like music. That kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress, plainness has its peculiar temptations and vices quite as much as beauty. She did not see why women were to be told with a simper that they were beautiful, any more than old men were to be told that they were venerable.

 Much beauty will go long way with the judge and the jury. The vast power of exquisite beauty, which nothing can almost add to or diminish, is eternal. To withdraw admiration from exquisite beauty, or to feel no delight in gazing at it, is as impossible as to feel no warmth from the most scorching rays of the Sun. She was so far from regretting want of beauty, that she never mentioned that perfection without contempt. If thou hast seen things of beauty without knowing what a beauty is, thou hast no eyes; if without feeling its power, thou hast no heart. Fine girls are spoiled by foolish mothers, who are continually trumpeting beauty in their ears without taking any care of their principles and dispositions. Beauty is like lighting, lovely, but destructive. Perhaps to a woman it is almost as dreadful to think of losing beauty as of losing reputation. It is a woman’s duty to be as beautiful as she can. A sensible woman would rather lose her wits then her beauty. There never was a woman that step handsomer in her shoes than Aaliyah did. Descriptions of beauty are never satisfactory. The beauty and glory of a great picture are confined within itself. It is a woeful thing, a sad necessity, that any Christian soul should pass from Earth without once seeing an antique painted window, with the bright Italian sunshine glowing through it. Her beauty shone out and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped.

 The Winchester Mystery House

Take a tour of The Winchester Mystery House, and you will soon find yourself immersed in the wonderful World of Victorian architecture and interior design. https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/