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“When you know as much as we do, nothing matters. Things just repeat. Day and night, summer and winter. The world is empty and aimless. Everything circles around. Whatever starts up must pass away,whatever is born must die. It all cancels out, good or bad, beautiful or ugly.”
― Michael Ende, The Neverending Story

“The nice people do not come to God, because they think they are good through their own merits or bad through inherited instincts. If they do good, they believe they are to receive the credit for it; if they do evil, they deny that it is their own fault. They are good through their own goodheartedness, they say; but they are bad because they are misfortunate, either in their economic life or through an inheritance of evil genes from their grandparents. The nice people rarely come to God; they take their moral tone from the society in which they live. Like the Pharisee in front of the temple, they believe themselves to be very respectable citizens. Elegance is their test of virtue; to them, the moral is the aesthetic, the evil is the ugly. Every move they make is dictated, not by a love of goodness, but by the influence of their age. Their intellects are cultivated—in knowledge of current events; they read only the bestsellers, but their hearts are undisciplined. They say that they would go to church if the Church were only better—but they never tell you how much better the Church must be before they will join it. They sometimes condemn the gross sins of society, such as murder; they are not tempted to these because they fear the opprobrium which comes to them who commit them. By avoiding the sins which society condemns, they escape reproach, they consider themselves good par excellence.”
― Fulton J. Sheen

“All ancient philosophers, poets, and moralists agree that love is a striving, an aspiration of the “lower” toward the “higher,” the “unformed” toward the “formed,” ... “appearance” towards “essence,” “ignorance” towards “knowledge,” a “mean between fullness and privation,” as Plato says in the Symposium. ... The universe is a great chain of dynamic spiritual entities, of forms of being ranging from the “prima materia” up to man—a chain in which the lower always strives for and is attracted by the higher, which never turns back but aspires upward in its turn. This process continues up to the deity, which itself does not love, but represents the eternally unmoving and unifying goal of all these aspirations of love. Too little attention has been given to the peculiar relation between this idea of love and the principle of the “agon,” the ambitious contest for the goal, which dominated Greek life in all its aspects—from the Gymnasium and the games to dialectics and the political life of the Greek city states. Even the objects try to surpass each other in a race for victory, in a cosmic “agon” for the deity. Here the prize that will crown the victor is extreme: it is a participation in the essence, knowledge, and abundance of “being.” Love is only the dynamic principle, immanent in the universe, which sets in motion this great “agon” of all things for the deity.
Let us compare this with the Christian conception. In that conception there takes place what might be called a reversal in the movement of love. The Christian view boldly denies the Greek axiom that love is an aspiration of the lower towards the higher. On the contrary, now the criterion of love is that the nobler stoops to the vulgar, the healthy to the sick, the rich to the poor, the handsome to the ugly, the good and saintly to the bad and common, the Messiah to the sinners and publicans. The Christian is not afraid, like the ancient, that he might lose something by doing so, that he might impair his own nobility. He acts in the peculiarly pious conviction that through this “condescension,” through this self-abasement and “self-renunciation” he gains the highest good and becomes equal to God. ...
There is no longer any “highest good” independent of and beyond the act and movement of love! Love itself is the highest of all goods! The summum bonum is no longer the value of a thing, but of an act, the value of love itself as love—not for its results and achievements. ...
Thus the picture has shifted immensely. This is no longer a band of men and things that surpass each other in striving up to the deity. It is a band in which every member looks back toward those who are further removed from God and comes to resemble the deity by helping and serving them.”
― Max Scheler

“And cried for mamma, at every turn'-I added, 'and trembled if a country lad heaved his fist against you, and sat at home all day for a shower of rain.-Oh, Heathcliff, you are showing a poor spirit! Come to the glass, and I'll let you see what you should wish. Do you mark those two lines between your eyes, and those thick brows, that instead of rising arched, sink in the middle, and that couple of black fiends, so deeply buried, who never open their windows boldly, but lurk glinting under them, like devil's spies? Wish and learn to smooth away the surly wrinkles, to raise your lids frankly, and change the fiends to confident, innocent angels, suspecting and doubting nothing, and always seeing friends where they are not sure of foes-Don't get the expression of a vicious cur that appears to know the kicks it gets are its desert, and yet, hates all the world, as well as the kicker, for what it suffers.'
'In other words, I must wish for Edgar Linton's great blue eyes, and even forehead,' he replied. 'I do - and that won't help me to them.'
'A good heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad,' I continued, 'if you were a regular black; and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly. And now that we've done washing, and combing, and sulking - tell me whether you don't think yourself rather handsome? I'll tell you, I do. You're fit for a prince in disguise. Who knows, but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen, each of them able to buy up, with one week's income, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange together? And you were kidnapped by wicked sailors, and brought to England. Were I in your place, I would frame high notions of my birth; and the thoughts of what I was should give me courage and dignity to support the oppressions of a little farmer!”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Leah taught me that the greatest secret of life is that we find exactly what we're looking for. In spite of what happens to us, ultimately we decide whether our lives are good or bad, ugly or beautiful.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Walk

“All my relationships are short and sweet. Well...short, anyway."
"Mine too."
I sat in a leather chair near the sofa. It was stylish but uncomfortable, shaped like a cube and encased in a polished chrome frame. "I guess that's bad, isn't it?"
He shook his head. "It shouldn't take a long time to figure out if someone is right for you. If it does, you're either dense or blind."
"Or maybe you're dating an armadillo."
Gage shot me a perplexed glance. "Pardon?"
"I mean someone who's hard to set to know. Shy and heavily armored."
"And ugly?"
"Armadillos aren't ugly," I protested, laughing.
"They're bulletproof lizards."
"I think you're an armadillo."
"I'm not shy."
"But you are heavily armored."
Gage considered that. He conceded the point with a brief nod. "Having learned about projection in couples counseling, I'd venture to say you're an armadillo too."
"What's projection?"
"It means you accuse me of the same things you're guilty of"
"Good Lord," I said, lifting the wineglass to my lips. "No wonder all your relationships are short.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Sugar Daddy

“Her eyes, always sad, now looked into the mirror with particular hopelessness. "She's flattering me," thought the princess, and she turned away and went on reading. Julie, however, was not flattering her friend: indeed, the princess's eyes, large, deep, and luminous (sometimes it was as if rays of light came from them in sheaves), were so beautiful that very often, despite the unattractiveness of the whole face, those eyes were more attractive than beauty. But the princess had never seen the good expression of thise eyes, the expression they had in moments when she was not thinking of herself. As with all people, the moment she looked in the mirror, her face assumed a strained, unnatural, bad expression.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Where did the fiction go?
When did we begin to write off literature when its contents contained a character who remained true to themselves?
It’s not my job as an author to create a character everyone likes, one who personifies perfection.
However…it is my job to be true to the character’s personality, even when their attributes are dark, demented, and contrary to all we believe, or have been taught is right.
It is my job to show the reader, the good, bad, and the ugly of the protagonist’s true nature that resides within them.
It is not my job to create a character everyone loves, adores, agrees, and sides with.
True literature remains true to the characters within the pages they inhabit; even when the readers may not understand or agree with their integrity or lack thereof.
As an author I share a bond with each and every character within the books I write. Though they are figments of my imagination, they are alive, and to them I will always remain true; even when the reader may, or may not understand.
©2015 Suzanne Steele”
― Suzanne Steele

“Negative thoughts compound. The more you think of yourself as worthless, stupid, or ugly, the more you condition yourself to interpret life that way. You get trapped in a thought loop. The same is true for how you think about others. Once you fall into the habit of seeing people as angry, unjust, or selfish, you see those kind of people everywhere.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

“If a negative viewer looks at you with an ugly fiendish eye, find a way and pluck off his eyes, or better still, protect your good image.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“Just because a person is attractive/beautiful, this does not mean it is okay to villainize them. We always say that we cannot judge a person from the outside (doesn't matter if they have a handicap, are ugly, have a deformity, etc.). But this must go both ways. It also does not matter if someone is beautiful, attractive and happy. That also does not make it okay to judge them, to villainize them. There is a double standard when it comes to whom people choose to be good to, and this double standard is wrong. The outward appearance, both the grotesque and the beautiful, must not be basis for kindness and for cruelty.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“A relationship is about appreciating the good, the bad, and the ugly. No one is perfect.”
― Penelope Ward, Drunk Dial

“There were over six hundred thousand words in the Oxford Dictionary. That meant there were six hundred thousand definitions of different words with a million and one meanings. Some words were silly while others were heartbreaking. Some words were happy while others were angry. So many different letters came together in different ways to form those different words, those unique meanings. So many words, but at the end of the day there was only one word that stood out among the rest. One word that somehow meant both heaven and hell, the sunny days and the rainy days, the good, the bad, and the ugly. It was the one word that made sense when everything else around you was messy, painful, and unapologetic. Love. With a smile, I wrapped my pinkie around his and said, “I love you.”
― Brittainy C. Cherry, Art & Soul

“I glanced over his shoulder to get a look at his latest drawing. A wolf and a coyote stood side by side beneath a dual sky, sun and moon shining at the same time.

"They're brothers," Rafael said. He laid his charcoal on the grass. "Wolf is wise and judicious. Coyote's a trickster. They're the two faces of God. Everything in the world is dual-natured. Even God isn't all good or all bad."

He told me about how the sun used to be married to the moon before they quarreled and parted ways, leaving the sun to rule the world at day and the moon at night. He told me how the Wolf had sewn us all out of seeds and put us in a cloth bag to keep us safe, but the Coyote had clawed the bag open and everyone had spilled out, landing and taking root in different parts of the world. He told me about the girl with Two Faces, one half of her face devastatingly beautiful, the other half impossibly ugly, and the man who lover her anyway. He told me about the days when death lacked permanence and ten different generations lived together beneath the same stars.

He talked, as he always talked, without any real purpose, clearing his head of the cluttering thoughts that had gathered and built up until he could pour them into me.”
― Rose Christo, Gives Light

“If we are always pushing away from feelings that we condemn as wrong, painful, or ugly, we are also pushing away from the very energy that can bring us incredible joy and ecstasy.”
― Shaeri Richards, Dancing with Your Dragon: The Art of Loving Your Unlovable Self

“Wasn’t that the great answer to the mystery of life? To make the most of what you have while you have it, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly.”
― T.J. Klune, Under the Whispering Door

“I was born Ezeogo Igariwey to live my life a legacy for the world,like a wound that healed with a scar that remains."My legacy will leave a mark on the world and I shall never be forgetten for my good,bad,and ugly deeds.”
― Tupac Shakur

“Look, in my opinion, the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you, the right person is still going to think the sun shines out your ass. That's the kind of person that's worth sticking with.”
― Diablo Cody, Juno: The Shooting Script

“I do have a strong faith in humanity that the day will come when good Muslims will stand up collectively against bad Muslims and say, "That is not Islam", and good Christians will stand up against bad Christians and say, "That is not how Christ would behave", and good Jews will take a stand against bad Jews and say, "That is not true Judaism", and good Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs will stand up against bad Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs and do the same — and so on. The day will come when the genuinely 'Truthful and Beautiful' will stand up against the 'Untruthful and Ugly', and the conscience will overpower the ego, and substance will reign over the superficial. This day will come before my generation is buried 6 feet deep, but not before the storm passes, and not before all races and religions of the world recognize that we all share a common enemy, and that the sum of us all is ONE. This day will come. I promise it will come. But it starts now with me, you and everyone. And do remember, dark clouds always eventually scatter after every storm to make way for the majestic rays of the beautiful sun. There is hope over the horizon. Truth always rises with Time.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem