Lupine Lessons

My Great-aunt Alice, Miss Rumphius, is very old now. Her hair is very white. Every year there are more and more lupines. Now they call her the Lupine Lady. Sometimes my friends stand with me outside her gate, curious to see the old, old lady who planted the fields of lupines. When she invites us in, they come slowly. They think she is the oldest woman in the world. Often she tells us stories of faraway places.
“When I grow up,” I tell her, “I too will go to faraway places and come home to live by the sea.
“That is all very well, little Alice,” says my aunt, “But there is a third thing you must do.” “What is that?” I ask.
“You must do something to make the world more beautiful."

http://www.barbaracooney.com/

Thinking about Beauty

Regularity [of features] without some metaphysical value behind it, some beauty of soul or character, was more disappointing—and indeed repulsive—than the honestly haphazard, the humanly messy. It was more disappointing because it promised something that was not there: it should engage the soul, but it did not. It was shallow and meretricious. So Mother Teresa of Calcutta, with her weepy eyes and her lined face, was infinitely more beautiful than…the current icons of feminine beauty?...Of course Mother Teresa was more beautiful—infinitely so. Only a culture with a thoroughly upside-down sense of values could think otherwise.
--Alexander McCall Smith, 44 Scotland Street

http://www.mccallsmith.com/