Beautiful

This week's Booking Through Thursday is:

What’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever read?

I don't know about the absolute most beautiful thing I've ever read, but I've copied several passages I've really liked over the years into a notebook I have. Two passages I thought were particularly well-crafted and are on beauty itself:

"When beauty is universal, it loses its power to move the heart, and only its absence can produce any emotional effect." - The City and the Stars, Arthur C Clarke

"Our muddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous form of things:
We murder to dissect."
- The Tables Turned, William Wordsworth

Another phrase which I found particularly resonant is:

"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
- The Hollow Men, T S Eliot


Any favourite passages of your own?