I have just finished reading a great work on Beauty by Roger Scruton.  I will certainly have to blog more on it over at my book review site, but here I just wanted to share a quote from near the end that struck me:

Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter; and we live that way because we have lost the habit of sacrifice and are striving always to avoid it. (p. 194)

Read this book; find what he means by living within sacrifice, and then live there.  It is a beautiful place.