Beauty

Breathtaking Beauty: Friesian Horses

Filed Under: Inspiration, Reflections · December 17, 2012 · 1 Comment ·

I admit horses are not a big part of my life.

I did read Black Beauty and National Velvet as a child and loved both. And I’ve enjoyed movies over the years that featured horses, such as National Velvet, Seabiscuit, Phar Lap and The Man from Snowy River… :)

But none of that resulted in my becoming a ‘horse person’. I’ve never owned a horse, and although I’ve ridden once or twice in my life, that was a long time ago. I don’t go to or watch ‘the races’, and only once attended a rodeo – which for some reason made me rather uncomfortable. As I wrote at the time: [Read more…]

Beauty Revisited

Filed Under: Reflections · April 18, 2012 · Leave a Comment ·

Three years ago, back in 2009, I wrote a blog post called Beauty, when Susan Boyle wowed the world with her singing on Britain’s Got Talent.

Her performance gave the world not only her glorious voice but also a sobering lesson about prejudice and about the folly of judging people by their outward appearance.

We might have hoped the judges and the BGT audience had learned that lesson and would never make such snap judgements again.

But did that happen?

Nope!

They’ve done it all over again in March this year.

They showed the same shallow prejudice immediately young 17-year-old Jonathan Antoine and 16-year-old Charlotte Jaconelli walked onto the stage.

Watch the video below to see what a huge mistake they made.

These two young people, their soaring voices – and their friendship – are indeed beautiful.

It may just bring a tear to your eye as it did to mine. :)

Beautiful-Sounding Words in English

Filed Under: Featured, Reflections · February 26, 2011 · 6 Comments ·

If I were asked to choose the most beautiful-sounding words in the English language, I’d be very hard-pressed to do so!

For me, words are like musical notes. It’s only when they dance together in phrases and sentences, that they create beautiful symphonies … or sometimes crashing disharmonies, for that matter. :)

If I’d thought about it at all, I would never have considered “cellar door” would be held up as one of the most beautiful-sounding – or euphonic – word combinations!

Yet that’s what I learned from this post on The Hot Word – which is the blog section of the very popular online reference source, Dictionary.com.

Amazing!

It was also fascinating to browse through the comments on that post, where readers suggested their own choices.

A later post on The Hot Word shared a list of words that had been most commonly mentioned by readers.

What was at the top of that list?

“Serendipity”.

And I have to agree that serendipity is a beautiful word – but not only because of its sound. It’s always been a favourite word of mine because of its meaning.

Other words people suggested most frequently included: soliloquy, epiphany, Elysium and elysian, scissors, vivacious, fudge, telephony, nycthemeron, cinnamon, woodthrush, phosphorescence, lithe, and languorous.

By the way … did you find yourself, as I did, reading that list aloud to hear its music?

What would be your choice? If you’ve got a favourite word or word combination that’s music to your ears, please drop me a line! :)