The nerves of beauty are so exquisitely tuned and strung that they must thrill at every touch.
 Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (1854). copy citation

add
Author Harriet Beecher Stowe
Source Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands
Topic beauty nerves
Date 1854
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6931/pg6931-images.html

Context

“Paris is divided into regular parishes, centring round different churches, and connected with each church is a parochial school, for boys and girls, taught by ecclesiastics and nuns. With such thorough training of the sense of beauty, it may be easily seen that the facility of French enthusiasm in aesthetics is not, as often imagined, superficial pretence. The nerves of beauty are so exquisitely tuned and strung that they must thrill at every touch. One sees this, in French life, to the very foundation of society. A poor family will give, cheerfully, a part of their bread money to buy a flower. The idea of artistic symmetry pervades every thing, from the arrangement of the simplest room to the composition of a picture.” source