Meditations, Book 3, Section 2

Marcus Aurelius — The Emperor

Here's something else to notice: whatever happens naturally to natural things has something pleasing about it. Take a big loaf of bread when it's baked. Some parts crack and split apart, making the crust rough and uneven. This goes against the baker's plan — the loaf was meant to be smooth and uniform. But these cracks and splits actually look good. They make you want to eat the bread. Figs look best when they start to shrink and wrinkle. Olives are most beautiful when they're almost rotting. Think of drooping grape clusters, a lion's fierce brow, or the foam around a wild boar's mouth. None of these things would seem beautiful on their own. But because they happen naturally, they are both attractive and delightful.

Marcus Aurelius — The Emperor Original

This also thou must observe, that whatsoever it is that naturally doth happen to things natural, hath somewhat in itself that is pleasing and delightful: as a great loaf when it is baked, some parts of it cleave as it were, and part asunder, and make the crust of it rugged and unequal, and yet those parts of it, though in some sort it be against the art and intention of baking itself, that they are thus cleft and parted, which should have been and were first made all even and uniform, they become it well nevertheless, and have a certain peculiar property, to stir the appetite. So figs are accounted fairest and ripest then, when they begin to shrink, and wither as it were. So ripe olives, when they are next to putrefaction, then are they in their proper beauty. The hanging down of grapes--the brow of a lion, the froth of a foaming wild boar, and many other like things, though by themselves considered, they are far from any beauty, yet because they happen naturally, they both are comely, and delightful;