There is no beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.
Bacon, Lord Verulam, as quoted by Poe in Ligeia
When an alchemist is done, he has turned lead into gold, and done it so sufficiently and carefully that it cannot be told from that whose origin was gold. The sacrifice for such beauty is death. What is outwardly an elegant art of purification, the likes of which all aspire to, is in truth an act of cannibalism. You cannot absorb beauty alone, lest you suffer its equal opposite, impurity. And there is no beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.