"If all the tongues that Polyhymnia
together with her sisters made most rich
with sweetest milk, should come now to assist
my singing of the holy smile that lit
the holy face of Beatrice, the truth
would not be reached—not its one-thousandth part."
together with her sisters made most rich
with sweetest milk, should come now to assist
my singing of the holy smile that lit
the holy face of Beatrice, the truth
would not be reached—not its one-thousandth part."
— Dante Alighieri, Paradiso XII.55-60
"'I am Aragorn, Arathorn's son, Isildur's Heir, Lord of the Dúnedain': yet even in the saying he felt that this high lineage, in which his heart had rejoiced, was now of little worth, and as nothing compared to her dignity and loveliness."
"Of Psyche's beauty—at every age the beauty proper to that age—there is only this to be said, that there were no two opinions about it, from man to woman, once she had been seen. [...] As the Fox delighted to say, she was 'according to nature'; what every woman, or even every thing, ought to have been and meant to be, but had missed by some trip of chance. [...] She made beauty all round her. When she trod on mud, the mud was beautiful; when she ran in the rain, the rain was silver. When she picked up a toad [...] the toad became beautiful."
"I was informed that you were the most beautiful woman ever to visit Casablanca. That was a *gross* understatement."
—Captain Louis Renault to Ilsa Lund, Casablanca
"There she is boys, Mandy Lane. Untouched, pure. Since the dawn of junior year men have tried to possess her, and to date all have failed. Some have even died in their reckless pursuit of this angel."
As she steps aboard, a commoner calmly takes a spoon from his pocket and scoops out his eyes. "After such radiance, all else is tawdry!" he says, between screams.
"It's important to not mince words here: Sharon Tate was really, really, really good-looking. Even by the standards of Hollywood, the city to which every best-looking girl from every American small town would flock looking for stardom, Sharon was so good-looking that she had a unique experience of the world. Restaurant owners would comp her meals just because. When she bought paint for her new apartment, the kid working at the hardware store offered to come back and paint Sharon's walls for her. Sharon was so beautiful that it was easy for her to walk into a casting room and make a good impression."
— Karina Longworth, You Must Remember This Episode 50
"...the handmaidens wondered aloud at her extreme pulchritude, as was etiquette to do so. Thus, so intent were they on the protocol of these compliments, that they missed the evidence that everything they said was correct. She was indeed slender and supple as a lotus stem, her breasts, truly, were like the bells of honeyflowers. Her loins and her limbs were, for sure, a delight to eye and hand and every sense; her hair a fountain of starshine, her eyes like the holy lake of Belsheved. For once, all they said was no more than factual, but the women scarcely noticed. If you had asked them, was the girl fair, they would have answered: "Pretty enough." Yet she was like the new moon gleaming upon the sea. She was like the morning of the morning."
—Tanith Lee, Tales from the Flat Earth
