What is beauty?

When I was 15, I was working on a philosophical tract “On the nature of Beauty”. The questions of what actually beauty is, how do we percept it, what is its source and true impact  – all that was puzzling my young and seeking mind at that time. I remember reading the Russian philosopher N. Chernyshevsky who stated that we find beautiful everything that in a way reselmbles ..ourselves. What a simple truth!

Years passed….I am still a beauty philosopher, however  I am not asking questions any more. I know what beauty is. And where it comes from.

And even though, I am always pleased to read something on this topic. Something like that:

“As the ocean cannot be emptied into a vessel made by human hands, so beauty cannot be captured within the limits of human definitions. There is the beauty of the pine tree, a beauty of straightness and uprightness; and again there is the beauty of the sweeping branches of the willow. Or again a curve added to the beauty of steadiness of form sometimes doubles that loveliness. What can explain this diversity? Beauty of movement, of gesture, of feature, of expression, of voice, all escape explanation, which is indeed but a limited thing.
How calmly the mountains and hills seem to be waiting for some day that is to come; if you go near to them and listen they seem to tell you this. How eagerly the trees and plants seem to be expecting some day, some hour; the hour that shall be the fulfillment of their desire. The same desire, intense and pronounced, is still seen in birds and in animals; but its fulfillment is in man. The same aspiration which works through all aspects of life and has brought forth such varying fruits culminates in humanity, and prepares through humanity a path that reaches up to the height called divinity, which is the perfection of beauty.” – by Hazrat Inyat Khan.

 (image by me)