It was not evil that gave her the idea of pleasure, that seemed to her attractive; it was pleasure, rather, that seemed evil.

Unlawful pleasure, trenching on another’s rights, is delusive and envenomed pleasure—its hollowness disappoints at the time, its poison cruelly tortures afterwards, its effects deprave forever.

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.

What thing so good which not some harm may bring?
Even to be happy is a dangerous thing.

But there must be some pleasure in condemning everything — in perceiving faults where others think they see beauties.'
'You mean there is pleasure in having no pleasure.

I believe it to be far from harmless — the Desire to be beautiful. This is a universal instinct, and it is easy to see how this desire, properly goaded, has every chance of getting out of hand. Once out of hand, it becomes the cause of much unhappiness. The young girl of today is the unhappy victim. I wish I could say the innocent victim — she is almost innocent. But let us take her side; she deserves it.

Pride misers with enjoyment, when we have
Delight in things that are but of the mind:
But half humility when we partake
Pleasures that are half wants, the spirit pines
And struggles in its fetters, and disdains
The low base clay to which it is allied.

Beauty is vain and charm is deceitful