the sure form

The human soul is hungry for beauty; we seek it everywhere—
in landscape, music, art, clothes, furniture, gardening, companionship, love, religion, and in ourselves.
When we experience the Beautiful, there is a wonderful sense of homecoming; we feel fully alive. Our lives become illuminated and we come to glimpse behind the shudder of appearances,
the sure form of things.

Beauty is the true priestess of individuation.
But our times are dominated by anxiety and by what is vulgar, coarse, and artificial.
Were Beauty to awaken in the fields of politics, religion, planning, discourse, and seeing, our world
would heal and fresh wells of hope would refresh us.

- John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace