Beauty is bad

Beauty is a dangerous gift. It is even so. Like wealth it has ruined its thousands. Thousands of the most beautiful women are destitute of comman sense and comman humanity. No gift from heaven is so general and so widely abused by women as the gift of beauty. In about nine cases in ten it makes her silly, senseless, thoughtless, giddy, vain, proud, frivolous, selfish, low, and mean. “She is beautiful, and she knows it.” Is as much as to say she is spoiled. A beautiful girl is very likely to believe she was made to be looked at; and so she sets herself up for a show at every window, in every door, on every corner of the street, in every company at which opportunity offers for an exhibition of herself. And believing and acting thus, she soon becomes good for nothing else, and when she comes to be a middle-aged woman she is the weakest, most sickening of all human things—a faded beauty.


These facts have long since taught sensible men to beware of beautiful women—to sound then carefully before they give them their confidence. Beauty is shallow—only skin-deep; fleeting—only for a few years’ reign; dangerous—tempting to vanity and lightness of mind; deceitful—dazzling often to bewilder; weak—reigningonly to ruin; gross—leading often to sensual pleasure. And yet we say it needs not to be so. Beauty is lovely and ought to be innocently possessed. It is a delightlful gift, which ought to be received with gratitude and worn with grace and meekness. It should always minister to inward beauty. Every woman of beautiful from and features should cultivate a beautiful mind and heart.