The Power of Beauty

I read a great article on the painter Thomas Kincade last week from the journal First Things www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/06/thomas-kinkadersquos-cottage-fantasy. The premise of the article is that Beauty matters, you will be shocked at the power of Thomas Kincade's early works, but he seems to have traded the pursuit of objective beauty for commercial success, judge for yourself. Above is a painting that I really like from Thomas Kincade which brings the viewer into a summer night. I was searching for Fyodor Dostoevsky's quote "Beauty will save the world," and instead found 8 quotes that will get your week off to a great start. Much of our life's success hinges on understanding that our hunger for beauty is really just a hunger for God's love. Once we figure that out, so much of life just falls into place.

>"Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side."
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

If there is no God, everything is permitted.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man's laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

To live without Hope is to Cease to live.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

To love someone means to see him as God intended him.
Fyodor Dostoevsky