Name: Beauty
SKU: 978-1-622827-121
Price: 14.95 USD
Rating: 5.0 (7 reviews)

What It is and Why It Matters

About this item

What we moderns have forgotten, the ancients knew well: true beauty heals the soul, draws us to God, and yields lasting happiness.

Rich with the wisdom of Plato, Augustine, Aquinas, and St. John Paul II, these pages unpack perennial truths about beauty and rivet them into your soul, opening the eyes of your understanding to the beauty all around us.

Offering an abundance of accessible examples, author John Mark Miravalle demonstrates that beauty is neither in the eye of the beholder, nor for the cultivated, the dreamer, or the “hopeless romantic” alone. On the contrary, the ability to understand, recognize, and delight in beauty readies all souls for heaven — and makes it easier for us to get there.

From these pages, you'll learn:

Why beauty is not just a matter of opinion.
The virtues we need to perceive beauty and to enjoy it.
How to determine whether an artwork is truly beautiful.
The respective roles of reason and emotion in appreciating beauty.
How the beauty of nature testifies to God's existence . . . while rejection of God obscures nature's beauty.

With the help of these pages, you'll receive fresh eyes to marvel again (or for the first time) at the beauty of nature, music, art, architecture, and, most importantly, the beauty of God, the fountainhead and exemplar of all things on earth that are beautiful.

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Too good not to read again!

I heard you on Teresa Tomeo's show today. Your book is amazing! I'm reading it a second time to see what I missed the first time around.

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The Priests We Need to Save the Church reminds us all -- priests and laity -- to live lives of holy boldness. May all the saintly priests who have gone before us -- including your Uncle Tommy -- pray for us as we continue the journey!

Delightful, poinant, and truly edifying !

The wisdom of centuries of great philosophers, poets, Popes, saints, and authors has been distilled and crystallized by this author so that every person can grow deeper into the mystery of beauty, truth, and goodness so desperately needed in our age . I daresay all of us have a foggy dream like notion of beauty, this book helps to draw that foggy image into high definition. The topic is heady subject matter made poignantly simple to understand. This is an excellent read, the author delightfully makes his case of the necessity of beauty, truth, goodness in and throughout all of our lives.

An Exceptionally Insightful and Accessible Presentation on Beauty

Far too often aesthetics finds itself stifled by the material and the immediate. In this book, Miravalle guides us through the classical understanding that beauty invites us to participate in the transcendent. Beauty directs us toward awe and reverence of the Other. This book is a must-read for artists, students of philosophy and theology, and for anyone who is curious to learn more about the sense of wonder that strikes them when experiencing art and the beautiful. I will return to this book frequently as a resource on the topic.

Should be on everyone's reading list

"Beauty: What it is & What it Matters" is a delightful book that should be on everyone’s “must-read list.” It is the fruit of deep reflection and a magnificent rumination on a subject that is obviously dear to the author’s heart, and about which he is excited. Reading this book could be a moment of conversion in one’s life, helping one understand the true meaning of life. Ideal for retreat reading and parish book groups, as well as college/seminary courses.