Three qualities of beauty
Filed under:
Journal •
Give Me Some Light •
Journal Entry •
On Books & Writing •
Beauty •
Quotable •
Umberto Eco

I think I might just scrap all of my syllabus explanations regarding how I grade essays and short stories in my writing classes. I'll just replace those with this passage from Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose:
For three things concur in creating beauty:
first of all integrity or perfection,
and for this reason we consider ugly
all incomplete things;
then proper proportion or consonance;
and finally clarity and light,
and in fact we call beautiful
those things of definite color.
— Adso, in The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco