Beauty :All of us are enchanted by beautiful forms. What does Beauty entail of? Is Beauty completely subjective, or is there any objective reality to it? What is there behind or beyond beauty, of which it is an expression? Is it possible to make our whole life into a masterpiece of art and beauty?

…Beauty is the divine language in forms.

[CWM2, 1:353]

Beauty is the special divine Manifestation in the physical as Truth is in the mind, Love in the heart, Power in the vital. Supramental beauty is the highest divine beauty manifesting in Matter.

Beauty is the way in which the physical expresses the Divine—but the principle and law of Beauty is something inward and spiritual and expresses itself through the form.

Beauty is Ananda taking form—but the form need not be a physical shape. One speaks of a beautiful thought, a beautiful act, a beautiful soul. What we speak of as beauty is Ananda in manifestation; beyond manifestation beauty loses itself in Ananda or, you may say, beauty and Ananda become indistinguishly one.

[SABCL, 9:491]

In the physical world, of all things it is beauty which expresses the Divine. The physical world is the world of form, and the perfection of form is beauty. … And once we admit this, that is in the physical world beauty is the best and closest expression of the Divine, it is natural to speak of it as the “priestess”, who interprets, expresses, manifests the Eternal. Its true role is to put the whole of manifested nature into contact with the Eternal through the perfection of form, harmony, and through a sense of the ideal which raises you towards something higher.

[CWM2, 12:232]

Beauty is a great power.

[CWM2, 15:232]

…beauty and delight, whatever form it takes,—for we may speak here of the two as one,—has an unaging youth, an eternal moment, an immortal presence.

[SABCL, 9:235–36]

Delight is the soul of existence, beauty the intense impression, the concentrated form of delight….

[SABCL, 9:235]

Harmony and beauty of the mind and soul, harmony and beauty of the thoughts and feelings, harmony and beauty in every outward act and movement, harmony and beauty of the life and surroundings…

[SABCL, 25:31]

…replace the less beautiful by the more, the lower by the higher, the mean by the noble.

[CWSA, 1:440]

Let beauty be your constant ideal.

The beauty of the soul

The beauty of sentiments

The beauty of thoughts

The beauty of the action

The beauty in the work

so that nothing comes out of your hands which is not an expression of pure and harmonious beauty.

And the Divine Help shall always be with you.

[CWM2, 12:232]

There is, behind all things, a divine beauty, a divine harmony: it is with this that we must come into contact; it is this that we must express.

[CWM2, 12:237]

Pure sense of beauty can be acquired only through a great purification.

[CWM2, 15:233]

It is necessary that those who create, whether in great things or small, whether in the unusual masterpieces of art and genius or in the small common things of use that surround a man’s daily life, should be habituated to produce and the nation habituated to expect the beautiful in preference to the ugly, the noble in preference to the vulgar, the fine in preference to the crude, the harmonious in preference to the gaudy. A nation surrounded daily by the beautiful, noble, fine and harmonious becomes that which it is habituated to contemplate and realizes the fullness of the expanding Spirit in itself.

[SABCL, 17:251]

Art galleries cannot be brought into every home, but, if all the appointments of our life and furniture of our homes are things of taste and beauty, it is inevitable that the habits, thoughts and feelings of the people should be raised, ennobled, harmonized, made more sweet and dignified.

[SABCL, 17:245]

The preoccupation with universal beauty even in its aesthetic forms has an intense power for refining and subtilising the nature, and at its highest it is a great force for purification.

[SABCL, 20:495]

We do not ordinarily recognize how largely our sense of virtue is a sense of beautiful in conduct and our sense of sin a sense of ugliness and deformity in conduct.

[SABCL, 17:240]

In everything, everywhere, in all relations truth must be brought out in its all-embracing rhythm and every movement of life should be an expression of beauty and harmony. Skill is not art, talent is not art. Art is a living harmony and beauty that must be expressed in all the movements of existence. The manifestation of beauty and harmony is part of the Divine realization upon earth, perhaps even its greatest part.

[CWM2, 3:109]

The great importance of beauty must also be emphasised. A young child should aspire for beauty, not for the sake of pleasing others or winning their admiration, but for the love of beauty itself; for beauty is the ideal which all physical life must realise. Every human being has the possibility of establishing harmony among the different parts of his body and in the various movements of the body in action. Every human body that undergoes a rational method of culture from the very beginning of its existence can realise its own harmony and thus become fit to manifest beauty.

[CWM2, 12:16–17]