Friedrich Nietzsche

Human, All Too Human

From the Souls of Artists and Writers

149 The slow arrow of beauty. -The noblest sort of beauty does not sweep us away all at once, does not make stormy and intoxicating assaults (such beauty easily awakens disgust), but is instead the slowly penetrating sort that we carry around with us almost unnoticed and that we encounter again at times in a dream, but that finally, after it has laid discreetly upon our heart for a long time, takes full possession of us and fills our eyes with tears, our hearts with yearning. -What do we yearn for at the sight of beauty? To be beautiful: we imagine that there must be much happiness bound up in this. -But that is an error.