It may sound odd to some, but I have favorite kanji, ones that I really like the look of in an artistic sense. One of them is 美 "utsuku(shii)" or "bi", depending on the use, and means "beautiful/beauty".
Like a lot of more complicated kanji, it's a combination of simpler ones. Here it is huge:
美
Here are the two it's made up of: "sheep" on top, 羊 and then "big" (think of a man holding his arms out to show size) 大. So, for linguistic reasons unknown to me, a "big sheep" is "beautiful." It's a nice example, though, of how learning very basic kanji can help you a lot down the road as you get into more complicated characters.
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