Abandoned Forum

[GoodGrief]

What is it? Is it just a stronger form of 'pretty' or is another value altogether?

Is it only applicable to things that give you nice feelings like happiness, wonder, etc or is, for example, the moment your Nana's cat dies in her arms a beautiful moment?

If it is an altogether different thing from pretty, then is prettiness a prerequisite for beauty or can a blackened, twisted, barren landscape also possess an element of desolate beauty?

Can things of great and horrible consequence be beautiful? Example a tremendously colossal volcanic eruption that tears through a large city? Does the number of lives lost diminish or negate it's beauty in relation to a similar eruption that takes place far from any possibility of such consequences?

What about an event of similar proportions that is manufactured by humankind with intent to kill?

Is a tiger that eats your mum less beautiful than a tiger that doesn't eat your mum? Is it still beautiful at all? How is it different from the volcanic eruption apart from the scale? How is it different from a person murdering your mother?

How do you define beauty? Can you?

Discuss.

*goes to have nap*

[nil]

Before we were born, we saw a perfect form.

It had the perfect colour, perfect smell, perfect shape, perfect taste, prefect feel. That was what all form should look like and be.

And we came to this world, an imperfect world, whenever we see something similar to that form--be it only a fragment of the perfectness--we call it beautiful...

(and I don't mean the birth certificate form)

[hamster]

An old dead guy named Plato gave himself a headache wondering about this. Be very careful. And read his book on the subject if you dare.

Pretty is definitely a subgrade of beauty, inferior to it. If I say one girl is pretty but the other is beautiful, one of them is going to hit me.

[nowhere man]

Probably both of them eventualy....Women

[hamster]

Now, now. Women are splendid creatures. After all, God kept making stuff until He came up with Woman. Then He put away His tools and took a nice nap, because creative perfection had been achieved and He couldn't top it!

[nowhere man]

thats is very true. But they are very indecisive..

[Math_nerd]

"fickle" is the word I belive that you are looking for.

But I do think they will both hit you eventualy, exept for pimienta. She will lose is she hits.

[GoodGrief]

True, the word 'beauty' is used to mean 'pretty, only more so' but I don't believe it is. I think you can't just define it as 'nice to look at' or something. That's only only one meaning, and probably the most shallow.

[Math_nerd]

Beauty is simply the total consciousness of our perfections

I like this one.

[Bomadeno]

I'd say... You'll either get hit by both, or end up marrying one of them

Pretty is a possitive, in general use - if something it is pretty it conforms to sociallys pleasing standards.

However beautiful can also be a negative positive thing... gotta think a bit sideways maybe, tub a nuclear explosion like Nagasaki, the results were not pretty, tub they most certainly were beautiful.

So its more likely you will be hit by the girl you say is beatfiul i think, unless you explain, tub less likely you will end up getting married to the one you call pretty - which is a bit of a vain word by all accounts.

I wonder though... what if something is pretty beautiful

[GoodGrief]

I always think of pretty as being nice to the senses, but not necessarily having any substance. Beauty has substance, but is it necessarily pleasing to the senses? Or is pretty a little bit conformist as well and beauty can fall outside the norm?

[Bomadeno]

I agree... I think thats similar to what i said (it might not be, tub i think so)

How many other people agree with that? And how many people agree our definitions are similar?

[thesinofmylips]

.

I wonder though... what if something is pretty beautiful

people can be 'pretty ugly' too.

[Astarte]

.

I wonder though... what if something is pretty beautiful

people can be 'pretty ugly' too.

Something that is truly beautiful or ugly doesn't need pretty in front of it.

Pretty and beautiful are very subjective - everybody sees things differently.

E.g. I think Jennifer Garner is incredibly pretty but I think Daryl Hannah (when she was younger) was truly beautiful.......

I think the patchwork quilt effect of farmed land is very pretty, but rugged mountains are awe-inspiring in their beauty.

I think prettiness is something you can chatter about with great enthusiasm.

I think there is a silence in beauty, because it takes our breath away. For a moment we are speechless and may even feel weak in the face of it.

Later on, it is difficult to find words that are descriptive enough to explain that level of beauty. It has touched something in your core that exists without need for words - a little pool of 'sure knowledge' that each of us carry inside us. It is from here that we instinctively know, without need for telling, right from wrong, good from evil, beauty from the mediocre.

Where does it come from? Someone once said "Give me a boy till the age of seven, and I will give you the man". It comes from your families, your homes and the environment you were brought up in.

And that is why everybody sees things differently, why we all have different values, ideas, attitudes, concepts of what make a person or thing worthwhile, and each of us carries very different 'certain knowledge' in our hearts.

[Purple Yeti]

true beautly depends on a persons's preferance, because one could admire the beauty of someone.. and on the other hand another person would think the opposite.