Perhaps ugliness is the most supreme form of beauty, in all its manifest forms, when we look at life under the microscope and go beyond the shackles of the unexpected, everyday encounters and begin to venture into the unknown, shocking, depths of reality.

Yes.

Beauty is food for the soul. And above all the beauty of what you imagine. This is much more important than exterior practicality. Energy comes from motivation. Motivation comes from desire. And the desire appears from the imagination. It is from what you imagine that you create the desire poles, and then go after that. So try to imagine things, imagine them well, clearly. This is very important. Many men have never had any experience in which the beautiful, the good and the true did not appear separated by insurmountable chasms. These men are victims of apeirokalia - and among them are some of the most notorious intellectuals who today make up the head of the world.

Theater and poetry (especially with regard to the epics that shape an entire society such as Odyssey or Os Lusíadas) can open souls to an influx from above. Music - certain music - cannot be denied the power to generate a similar effect. The simple contemplation of nature, a providential chance, or even, in sensitive souls, certain states of loving rapture, when associated with a strong moral appeal (remember Raskolnikov before Sonia, in Crime and Punishment), can put the soul in a kind of ecstasy that frees you from the cave and from apeirokalia.

Once heard the experience of a man who was changing his hormonal make up toward a female/feminine profile and what was emphasized was a tremendous shift in his aesthetic experience of beauty. The gist was that the aesthetic field somehow broadened away from a a more narrow, possibly sexual preoccupation, to encompass more general phenomena (ie. the stark beauty of a variety of mundane scenarios of being in the world somehow ballooned). But this could just be anecdotal testimonial hormonal drama of an n of 1.

If your interested, you should read “Six Names of Beauty” by Crispin Sartwell. It’s an easy read, but I found it interesting. It covers six names for beauty in different languages/cultures and compares/contrasts them.

Here's an attempt at defining 'beauty' excerpted from an old post on thread about 'aesthetics' —

Beauty ... seems an aesthetic property which functions like a strange attractor to the beholder's attention - mediated by acculturated expectations/archetypes - which the apparent symmetries of the beheld afford (sort of) a path of least attentional effort and thereby an easy (i.e. lower caloric) pleasure-payoff that facilitates repetitious re-engagement and memorization. — 180 Proof

How about:

I ain't no monkey but I know what I like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGsOmKZXDvo

very beautiful definition of beauty, — Thinking

This statement has the seeds of a paradox. I can't quite put my finger on it though. The topic is beauty. You not only have something truthful to say about it but also it's beautiful. That means, beauty is some kind of extra feature to things. It must be added on - things just can't be whatever they are but need to be beautified but that sentiment is at loggerheads with those who, in fits of deep emotion, say things like, "the sense of awe and wonder evoked by the beauty of the universe". Is "beauty" just an excuse for humans to impose their own sense of symmetry onto the universe, assuming as some have that our beauty-meter is symmetry-sensitive?

So, running with that simple assumption - the assumption that beauty is symmetry or its close cousins - what's so symmetrical about your "beautiful definition of beauty"? In what sense can a definition be symmetric? Anyone care to address this question?

In a very simple, geometric sense, one half of the definition should mirror the other half. Is your definition a palindrome? I've got it! Eureka. Beauty is "OOH HOO"

OOH = an expression of delight
HOO = she (I believe Scottish) = an expression of triumph

Beauty delights. Women are the quintessential objects of beauty [survey the mythology of all cultures]. And one is triumphant when one acquires a thing beautiful.

:rofl:

My meditations on beauty has been this:
Beauty and perfection are synonymous with each other. So as is what is beautiful and perfect. All life is perfect because all life strives for its own perfection. Similarly we are all beautiful, but lose our beauty when we get out of touch with our own living nature and turn towards artificiality, which is devoid of life. Gods living creations are far more perfected than anything artificial man creates, for they are capable of being eternal through auto-genesis.
This living perfection, like God himself, knows no real limit. Supplementing and analyzing the perfect creations of God with artificial creations of Man, drains Man and his environment of beauty. In order to get closer to God Man should be like a god himself. By creating and perfecting the living creations of God, Man perfects himself too. Man becomes like a god in that he is a creator and perfect himself, for perfection in creation, in turn, perfects the creator. That is why it is so important to create beauty in every aspect of your life and, in turn, you yourself will become more beautiful, and live a beautiful life.