In my opinion, there is nothing more elegant than a few words set very large in a "Modern" typeface, such as Bodoni or one of its many variants. This article by Jennifer Farley introduces the Modern (or Didone) typeface, with usage guidelines and links to several free (hopefully not bootlegged) fonts of this style. You might also want to look at my "Modern" designs: Dionisio, Norberto, Ransahoff, and Vincenzo at: http://castletype.com. Sorry, they are not free.

For an article on Bodoni (the typeface), see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodoni