Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Beauty

[Beauty points to] the ultimate source from which all beauty in its appearing flows. The name of the source and centre is, without qualification, love, in its incomprehensible passing over from itself into what is other than itself.

 

Beauty retails the mystery of being on every street corner, yet only those who have an adequate sensibility can understand it.


We can be sure that whoever sneers at [beauty’s] name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past—whether he admits it or not—can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.


HANS URS VON BALTHASAR