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Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity.
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“Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity.”

Plato

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Source
The Republic
Date
4th century BCE
Local voice
Dialogue speaker · Socrates
English wording
Benjamin Jowett — Translator · from Ancient Greek
Meaning

Meaning of “Beauty of style and harmony and grace and…”

Aesthetic excellence is linked with order and simplicity rather than decorative complexity for its own sake.

Source context

Where does it come from?

The Republic, Book III, Jowett translation; the passage connects musical and literary form with simplicity of character.

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Speaker context

Why the local voice matters

Socrates says this to Glaucon in Republic, Book III, during the discussion of musical and literary education.

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Themes

Ideas connected with this quotation

ArtBeautifulBookCreativityReadingShortSimplicityWritingMusic
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Thus it is: added difficulty, added beauty;
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“Thus it is: added difficulty, added beauty;”

Robert Louis Stevenson · Essays in the Art of Writing · 1905
Meaning & context

In the specific context of verse technique, Stevenson argues that an additional formal constraint can create another opportunity for artistic achievement and aesthetic interest.

Source details

Essays in the Art of Writing, “On Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature”; Project Gutenberg #492. “Difficulty” here concerns literary form and craft, not a universal claim that hardship automatically makes things better.

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We shall never learn the affinities of beauty
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“We shall never learn the affinities of beauty”

Robert Louis Stevenson · Essays in the Art of Writing · 1905
Meaning & context

Stevenson treats beauty as deeper than any complete technical explanation, warning that analysis of artistic mechanism does not exhaust why form can move or delight.

Source details

Essays in the Art of Writing, “On Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature,” represented by the 1905 Chatto & Windus edition in Project Gutenberg #492. The collection is posthumous; the excerpt concerns literary aesthetics.

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There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away.
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“There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away.”

Emily Dickinson · Poems: Third Series — A Book · 1896
Meaning & context

Dickinson turns reading into a form of travel: language can carry a reader beyond physical limits without requiring wealth, distance, or transportation.

Source details

Poem commonly titled “A Book,” later known by its opening line; first two lines of the poem.

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He will remember always that beauty exists in many forms.
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“He will remember always that beauty exists in many forms.”

Walter Pater · The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry · 1873
Meaning & context

The sentence resists a single narrow standard of beauty and asks the critic to remain open to excellence appearing through different periods, types and schools.

Source details

The Renaissance, Preface; Project Gutenberg #2398. The following sentences extend the point across periods and schools of taste.

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To a poet nothing can be useless.
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“To a poet nothing can be useless.”

Samuel Johnson · Rasselas · 1759
Voice: Fictional character · Imlac
Meaning & context

Creative attention turns a wide range of experience into material; knowledge that seems unrelated can later supply images, comparisons or instruction.

Source details

Rasselas, Chapter X; spoken by Imlac in his account of learning the poet’s craft through broad observation.

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