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Full Idea
Beauty is the supreme mystery of the world. It is a gleam which attracts the attention and yet does nothing to sustain it. …While exciting desire, it makes clear that there is nothing in it to be desired, because what we want is that it should not change.
Gist of Idea
Beauty is an attractive mystery, leaving nothing to be desired
Source
Simone Weil (Human Personality [1943], p.92)
Book Ref
Weil,Simone: 'An Anthology' [Penguin 1986], p.92
A Reaction
She attributes beauty to a supernatural source. I catalogue this idea under 'the sublime', rather than 'beauty'. It may be better to say that beauty inspires love, rather than desire.
Related Idea
Idea 23759 Everything which originates in love is beautiful [Weil]
| 22046 | The mathematical sublime is immeasurable greatness; the dynamical sublime is overpowering [Kant, by Pinkard] |
| 21458 | The sublime is a moral experience [Kant, by Gardner] |
| 21928 | The Sublime fights for will-less knowing, when faced with a beautiful threat to humanity [Schopenhauer, by Lewis,PB] |
| 24087 | People who miss beauty seek the sublime, where even the ugly shows its 'beauty' [Nietzsche] |
| 24091 | The sublimity of nature which dwarfs us was a human creation [Nietzsche] |
| 20430 | In life we neglect 'cosmic emotion', but it matters, and art brings it to the fore [Fry] |
| 23923 | Visual form can create a sublime mental state [Bell,C] |
| 23758 | Beauty is an attractive mystery, leaving nothing to be desired [Weil] |
| 23070 | We morally dissolve if we spend time with excessive beauty [Cioran] |
| 20386 | The sublime is negative in awareness of insignificance, and positive in showing understanding [Davies,S] |
| 24175 | Accounts of sublimity differ over whether we learn something good about ourselves [Cochrane] |