Symmetry Quotes - Page 2

• Symmetry may have its appeal but it is inherently stale. Some kind of imbalance is behind every transformation.

  Marcelo Gleiser

  May, Imbalance, Transformation

  Marcelo Gleiser (2010). “A Tear at the Edge of Creation: A Radical New Vision for Life in an Imperfect Universe”, p.14, Simon and Schuster

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Art knows no happier moment than the opportunity to show the symmetry of an extreme, during that moment of spheric harmony when the dissonance dissolves for the blink of an eye, dissolves into a blissful harmony, when the most extreme opposites, coming together from the greatest alienation, fleetingly touch with lips of the word and of love.

  Stefan Zweig

  Art, Eye, Opportunity

  19 Copy quote

• Don't confuse symmetry with balance.

  Tom Robbins

  Balance

  12 Copy quote

• The fact is that the beautiful, humanly speaking, is merely form considered in its simplest aspect, in its most perfect symmetry, in its most entire harmony with our make-up. Thus the ensemble that it offers us is always complete, but restricted like ourselves. What we call the ugly, on the contrary, is a detail of a great whole which eludes us, and which is in harmony, not with man but with all creation. That is why it constantly presents itself to us in new but incomplete aspects.

  Victor Hugo

  Beautiful, Makeup, Men

  Victor Hugo (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Victor Hugo (Illustrated)”, p.12466, Delphi Classics

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• Symmetry is tedious, and tedium is the very basis of mourning. Despair yawns.

  Victor Hugo

  Boredom, Mourning, Despair

  'Les Misèrables' (1862) vol. 2, bk. 4, ch. 1

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.

  Derek Walcott

  Strong Love, Stronger, Broken Pieces

  Derek Walcott (2014). “What the Twilight Says: Essays”, p.69, Macmillan

  76 Copy quote

  Show source

• I mean your borrowers of books - those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.

  Charles Lamb

  Book, Mean, Odd

  'Essays of Elia' (1823) 'The Two Races of Men'

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• The most general law in nature is equity-the principle of balance and symmetry which guides the growth of forms along the lines of the greatest structural efficiency.

  Herbert Read

  Law, Growth, Balance

  Herbert Read (1963). “Selected Writings: Poetry and Criticism”

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• We find, therefore, under this orderly arrangement, a wonderful symmetry in the universe, and a definite relation of harmony in the motion and magnitude of the orbs, of a kind that is not possible to obtain in any other way.

  Johannes Kepler

  Way, Orbs, Kind

  14 Copy quote

• Nothing is so stifling as symmetry. Symmetry is boredom, the quintessence of mourning. Despair yawns. There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering - a hell of boredom.

  Victor Hugo

  Wisdom, Blessing, Boredom

  Victor Hugo, Charles Edwin Wilbour (1987). “Les misérables”, Dutton Adult

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• The butterfly's attractiveness derives not only from colors and symmetry: deeper motives contribute to it. We would not think them so beautiful if they did not fly, or if they flew straight and briskly like bees, or if they stung, or above all if they did not enact the perturbing mystery of metamorphosis: the latter assumes in our eyes the value of a badly decoded message, a symbol, a sign.

  Primo Levi

  Beautiful, Eye, Butterfly

  61 Copy quote

• Graphic design, which evokes the symmetria of Vituvius, the dynamic symmetry of Hambidge, the asymmetry of Mondrian; which is a good gestalt, generated by intuition or by computer, by invention or by a system of coordinates, is not good design if it does not communicate.

  Paul Rand

  Design, Intuition, Gestalt

  "A designer's art". Book by Paul Rand, 1968.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• I attain a different kind of beauty, achieve a symmetry by means of infinite discords, showing all the traces of the mind's passage through the world, achieve in the end some kind of whole made of shivering fragments.

  Virginia Woolf

  Mean, Mind, Different

  Source: therumpus.net

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.

  Herman Melville

  Fiction, Fables, Facts

  Herman Melville, Douglas Robillard (2000). “The Poems of Herman Melville”, p.32, Kent State University Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Funny, Witty

  151 Copy quote

• There's the tree with the branches that everyone sees, and then there's the upside-down root tree, growing the opposite way. So Earth is the branches, growing in opposing but perfect symmetry. The branches don't think much about the roots, and maybe the roots don't think much about the branches, but all the time, they're connected by the trunk, you know?

  Gabrielle Zevin

  Thinking, Opposites, Roots

  Gabrielle Zevin (2016). “Elsewhere”, p.69, Bloomsbury Publishing

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• If proportion is the good breeding of architecture, symmetry, or the answering of one part to another, may be defined as the sanity of decoration.

  Edith Wharton

  May, Architecture, Sanity

  Edith Wharton, Ogden Codman (2015). “The Decoration of Houses”, p.33, Courier Dover Publications

  41 Copy quote

  Show source

• The universe is an enormous direct product of representations of symmetry groups.

  Steven Weinberg

  Beauty, Art, Groups

  11 Copy quote

• We will have to abandon the philosophy of Democritus and the concept of elementary particles. We should accept instead the concept of elementary symmetries.

  Werner Heisenberg

  Philosophy, Accepting, Should

  21 Copy quote

• All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be effort, and the law of human judgment, mercy.

  John Ruskin

  Life, Mistake, Errors

  John Ruskin (1867). “The Stones of Venice”, p.171

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm terribly fastidious. I like symmetry and neatness, but my house is as chaotic as any other family's.

  Kevin McCloud

  House, Chaotic, Fastidious

  "Grand Designs Kevin McCloud: 'My House Is as Chaotic as Yours'". Interview with Judith Woods, www.telegraph.co.uk. October 27, 2010.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• We may say of agreeableness, as distinct from beauty, that it is a symmetry whose rules are unknown.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  May, Agreeableness

  8 Copy quote

• Symmetry is for God, not for us.

  Louis de Bernieres

  Louis de Bernieres (2012). “Corelli's Mandolin: A Novel”, p.257, Vintage

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• When you look into a mirror it is not yourself you see, but a kind of apish error posed in fearful symmetry kool uoy nehW rorrim a otni ton si ti ˛ees uoy flesruoy dnik a tub rorre hsipa fo lufraef ni desop yrtemmys

  John Updike

  Errors, Mirrors, Perspective

  9 Copy quote

• If either man or woman would realize that the full power of personal beauty, it must be by cherishing noble thoughts and hopes and purposes; by having something to do and something to live for that is worthy of humanity, and which, by expanding and symmetry to the body which contains it.

  Misty Upham

  Beauty, Men, Humanity

  9 Copy quote