Compiled  by London swaminathan

 

Date: 19  February 2016

 

Post No. 2555

 

Time uploaded in London :–  9-37 AM

 

( Thanks for the Pictures  ) 

 

DON’T REBLOG IT AT LEAST FOR A WEEK!  DON’T USE THE PICTURES; THEY ARE COPYRIGHTED BY SOMEONE.

 

(for old articles go to tamilandvedas.com OR swamiindology.blogspot.com; 

 

 

There are umpteen proverbs and sayings about BEAUTY. Some are in favour of it and some are against it; some about its bad influence and some about its positive effect. Let us look at these sayings with my comments:-

 

I have compiled  59 beautiful quotations on Beauty!

Its superficiality

 

1.Beauty is only skin deep

2.Beauty is only one layer (Japanese Proverb)

3.Beauty may have fair leaves, yet bitter fruit

4.Fair face, foul heart

5.The peacock has fair feathers, but foul feet

( I don’t agree; who looks at its foul feet; In Tamil we say same thing about Rose: Rose has thorns in it!)

6.There is many a fair thing full false

7.Fair without, false within

8.Beauty and honesty seldom agree

9.Beauty and folly go often in company

10.White silver draws black lines

 

Some of the above comments are not fair; they are subjective. When one is adversely affected by a beautiful woman, then one criticizes. But Hindu saints like Adi Shankara and Pattinathar also criticised beauty of a woman, but with a philosophical view. They not only criticized woman and her beauty but also wealth and other pleasures.

 

Influence of Beauty

11.Beauty draws more than oxen

12.Beauty opens locked doors

13.Beauty is eloquent even when silent

14.A good face is a letter of recommendation

15.A fair face is half a portion

 

We very often come across complaints that a woman get promoted or given higher salary in many institutions, because she was beautiful and favoured by x, y,z.

 

Even a famous BBC broadcaster criticized BBC for its choice of women broadcasters with beautiful face sans brain. A famous quotation says “A woman’s geography is more important than a woman’s history”.

Its unimportance

16.The fair and the foul, by dark are like store.

17.All cats are grey in the dark

18.Goodness is better than Beauty

19.Good fame is better than a good face

20.Handsome is handsome does

I don’t find anything wrong with the above statements.

 

 

Its inadequacy

21.Beauty without bounty avails nought

22.A fair woman without virtue is like palled wine

(Everyone will agree)

23.Beauty won’t make the pot boil

24.No one can live on Beauty, but they can die for it.

(Taj Mahal is an example; legendary lovers like Romeo and Juliet, Ambikapathy and Amaravathy, Attanathy and Athimanthi of Sangam Tamil literature are some more examples)

25.Prettiness makes no pottage

26.A poor beauty finds more lovers than husbands

(very true; they are misused and abused; but nowadays they sue the abusers 10 or 20 years after the relationship and get a fat compensation in western countries)

 

27.Beauty is no inheritance

(very true; even a fisherwoman/ Beauty  changed Indian history according to Mahabharata)

28.Beauty is potent but money is omnipotent

 

Its ephemerality

29.Beauty is but a blossom

30.The fairest flowers soonest fade

31.The fairest rose is at last withered

32.Grace will last, beauty will blast

33.Prettiness dies first

(This is a popular theme of Hindu poets; this is the condition of a person’s life, according to Hindu saints; they warn men and women that youthfulness won’t last long)

 

Its subjectivity

34.Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

(My teacher Professor S Ramakrishnan –SRK of Madurai—remarked very often that “the eternal hope of every woman is that she is beautiful to someone in the world”. Very true; I see many lovers as mismatch; but they live together happily. In London white women marry black men; Love is blind or Beauty is in the eye of the beholder)

 

35.A ship under sail

A man in complete armour

A woman with a great belly

Are three of the handsomest sights.

 

36.Beauty fades like a flower

37.Fair is not fair, but that which pleases

 

38.If Jack is in love, he is no judge of Jill’s beauty

39.The owl thinks her own young fairest

(yes, we have a similar proverb in Tamil; a crow thinks that its own young is a golden one)

 

 

Is sources

40.Health and gaiety foster beauty

41.Health and wealth create beauty

42.A blithe heart makes a blooming visage

43.The joy of the heart makes the face fair

 

 

Its disadvantages

44.The fairest silk is soonest soonest stained

45.In an ermine spots are soon discovered

46.The fairer the paper, the fouler the blot (beauty shows up by contrast even the smallest fault)

47.The smaller the peas, the more to the pot; the fairer the woman  the more the giglot (Giglot means wanton)

48.Who has a fair wife need more than two eyes

49.Please your eye and plague your heart

 

50.A fair wife and a frontier castle breed quarrels

51.Pretty face, poor fate (Chinese Proverb)

52.Beauty’s sister is vanity, and its daughter lust

53.A woman and a cherry are painted for their own harm

 

Its value

54.A bonny bride is soon buskit and

A short horse is soon weskit

(Buskit means adorned; wispit means rubbed down)

55.A thing of beauty is a joy for ever (John Keats in Endymion; 1795-1821)

 

56.A good face needs no band, and a bad one deserves none (band means adornment)

57.Who is born fair born married

58.A fair face cannot have a crabbed heart

59.An enemy to beauty is a foe to nature

–Subham–