Aesthetics Quotes

“A boy throws stones into the stream, and then looks with wonder at the circles which follow in the water, regarding them as a result in which he sees something of his own doing. This human need runs through the most varied phenomena up to that particular form of self-reproduction in the external fact which is presented us in human art. And it is not merely in relation to external objects that man acts thus. He treats himself, that is, his natural form, in similar manner: he will not permit it to remain as he finds it; he alters it deliberately. This is the rational grounds of all ornament and decoration, though it may be as barbarous, tasteless, entirely disfiguring, nay, as injurious as the crushing of the feet of Chinese ladies, or the slitting of ears and lips.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, Vol 1: Introduction & Parts 1-2

“the beauty of nature appears only as a reflectin of the beauty,that belongs to spirit, as an imperfect incomplete mode [of beauty],
a mode which in its substance is contained in the spirit itself"
*hegel”
― T.M. Knox, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, Vol 1: Introduction & Parts 1-2