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Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.

— David Hume Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741)

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Beauty

More quotes by David Hume

Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

It is a great mortification to the vanity of man, that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value.

Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741)

Where ambition can be so happy as to cover its enterprizes, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of all human passions.

The History of England (1754)

Heaven and Hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad; but the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue.

If nature has been frugal in her gifts and endowments, there is the more need of art to supply her defects.

Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741)

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Beautiful objects are wrought by study through effort, but ugly things are reaped automatically without toil.

Democritus Freeman (1948)

True beauty dwells in deep retreats,
Whose veil is unremoved
Till heart with heart in concord beats,
And the lover is beloved.

William Wordsworth

The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they're seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?

André Gide The Immoralist (1902)

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator.

William Shakespeare The Rape of Lucrece (1594)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: David Hume (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.