Countless notable people have endeavoured over the centuries to define "beauty" in a few simple words. However, few would argue that anyone has truly succeeded - not even the authors of the contributions listed below.

• Beauty is that which causes you to stop in your tracks with the thought that you8 belong to this world, and this world to you. (Roger Scruton - Philosopher and writer)
• Beauty is the first present nature gives to women and the first it takes away. (Fay Weldon - Author)
• Einstein's Theory of General Relativity describes everything we have ever observed about gravity in one equation; to a physicist that is beauty. (Professor Brian Cox - Physicist)
• Beauty is the force that grasps our attention, holds it, and fills it with interest and pleasure, lifting ourselves away from ourselves for a while, and returning us to ourselves refreshed. (A C Grayling - Philosopher)
• Beauty is the promise of happiness. (Stendhal - French writer)
• Beauty is an unwitting automatic connection, through the senses, with aspects of the world that speak to the deepest animal understanding of something that is beyond desirable. (Oliver James - Clinical psychologist)
• Beauty is the physical equivalent of what in the moral sphere we call goodness. It is an incarnated version of the good. (Alain de Botton - Writer and philosopher)
• My aim is to omit everything superfluous...I hate everything that is driven by fashion. (Dieter Rams - Industrial designer)
• Beauty is much more than symmetry or proportions. It is about colour, texture, an inner glow when it comes to people; and a memory or promise of enchantment when looking at a landscape. (Dame Athene Donald - Physicist)
• Beauty?... Tome it is a word without sense because I do not know where its meaning comes from nor where it leads to. (Pablo Picasso - Artist)
• Beauty is the combination of all the qualities of a person or thing that delight the senses and please the mind. (Collins English Dictionary)
• Beauty, to me, is about being comfortable in your own skin. That or a kiss-ass red lipstick. (Gwyneth Paltrow - Actress)
• I sincerely feel that beauty largely comes from within. (Christy Turlington - Model)
• Beauty is an illusion. A mirage. beauty is difficult to capture and define. It is also fragile and rare. What is beautiful to me is untouched nature. You don't see that much nowadays. (Manolo Blahnik - Shoe designer)
• Beauty to me is seeing the expression on my daughter's face as she lies peacefully sleeping in my arms. (Maggie Aderin-Pocock - Space scientist)
• Looking in to someone's eyes and knowing that you have loved them for ever. That's beauty. (Tracey Emin - Artist)
• Beauty is from the heart. I surround myself with beauty and that is not just beautiful women and fashion, it is a sense of mind and soul. (Roberto Cavalli - Fashion designer)#
• Beauty is confidence, there is nothing more attractive. (Tamara Mellon - Shoe entrepreneur)
• I define nothing. Nor beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be. (Bob Dylan Singer and songwriter)
• Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart. (Kahlil Gibran - Artist and poet)
• Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the fleeting glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time. (Albert Camus - Author and philosopher)
• The quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, whether arising from sensory manifestations (as shape, colour, sound etc), color, a meaningful design or pattern, or something else (as a personality in which high spiritual qualities are manifest).(Dictionary.com)