It's not beautiful how much this is driving me crazy.

February 26, 2010 9:05 PM

Help me remember a quote that features the word "beautiful" several times... Seriously, please help because it's driving me batty.

I've got a snippet of a quote roiling my brain. It's something along the lines of:

"...beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, and then again beautiful, and most beautiful..."

Is it from a poem? A novel, a film, a song? I have no idea and google is no help. I get the strong feeling that it's from the end of something -- the end of a Shakespeare play? The end of a novel or longish poem?

posted by BlahLaLa to media & arts (10 answers total)

Your line sounds familiar, and E. E. Cummings was the first thing to spring to my mind. However, though Cummings uses the word "beautiful" a lot in his work, googling reveals no poem with a line quite like this. i love you much(most beautiful darling) is probably the closest.
posted by hot soup girl at 9:39 PM on February 26, 2010

I'm working on this. So far, the closest thing I've come to it are separate usages at forums of the phrase, "Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, and once again beautiful!" But they stand alone and don't seem to have a common origin.
posted by bryon at 9:43 PM on February 26, 2010

Okay, somehow, 30 minutes after posting it on AskMe, it came to me. It's not BEAUTIFUL, it's WONDERFUL. And so a little googling shows that it's from As You Like It: "O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! and yet again wonderful..."

Except I knew that wasn't the full answer -- because I don't know As You Like It that well. But a little more googling showed my true answer: it was used in one of my all-time favorite movies, L.A. Story, a film that has a lot of allusions to Shakespeare. Steve Martin says, "So there I was jabbering at her about my new job as a serious newsman - about anything at all - but all I could think was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful and yet again, wonderful."

Thanks for helping with my very vague question!
posted by BlahLaLa at 9:49 PM on February 26, 2010 [3 favorites]

Now this is interesting. Look at this site, off in the right sidebar, the quote attributed to Ian. But, once again, it seems to spring from nothingness. Have you read this site that you might have seen it? A Google search for the phrase turns up precisely this single usage.
posted by bryon at 9:49 PM on February 26, 2010 [1 favorite]

Ah, well and good.
posted by bryon at 9:50 PM on February 26, 2010

(For some reason the little green check mark is not showing up on the main page, but I have marked this question resolved.)
posted by BlahLaLa at 9:57 PM on February 26, 2010

Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful flamingo, flying across in front of a beautiful sunset? And he’s carrying a beautiful rose in his beak, and also he’s carrying a very beautiful painting with his feet. And also, you’re drunk.
posted by cgc373 at 12:08 AM on February 27, 2010 [3 favorites]

When I read this question I immediately knew before I clicked inside "this person is thinking of L.A. Story when Steve Martin quotes As You Like It" because I have done this exact thing over and over in the 20 years since that film was released. "Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful..."
posted by annathea at 1:08 AM on February 27, 2010 [2 favorites]

(The green check mark only shows up if you select "mark as best answer" on one of the responses.)
posted by lizzicide at 6:28 AM on February 27, 2010

"O wonderful, wonderful, most wonderful wonderful, and yet
again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping! " --
are Celia's words in Act III, scene 2, of Shakespeare's "As You Like It."
posted by Bet Glenn at 1:38 PM on February 27, 2010 [1 favorite]