Esthetics: A Footnote To God's Love

One of the strangest things I find in life is the way good looks can command attention, and yet how vain and deceitful they are in the absence of a devoted heart. The following quote is taken from Fear and Trembling III.145. The text is from a part of a footnote, but a sobering footnote indeed!

Esthetics just sees to it that the lovers find each other and does not concern itself about the rest. If only it would see what happens afterwards, but it has no time for that and promptly proceeds to slap a new pair of lovers together. Of all the branches of knowledge, esthetics is the most faithless. Anyone who has really loved it becomes in one sense unhappy, but he who has never loved it is and remains a dumb brute.
-Silento

So many fashion magazines ... so little zeal.