BBC – Culture – JR flyposts the New York City Ballet building.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
This saying first appeared in the 3rd century BC in Greek. In 1588, the English dramatist John Lyly, in his Euphues and his England, wrote:
”…as neere is Fancie to Beautie, as the pricke to the Rose, as the stalke to the rynde, as the earth to the roote.”
Shakespeare expressed a similar sentiment in Love’s Labours Lost, 1588:
Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean,
Needs not the painted flourish of your praise:
Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye,
Not utter’d by base sale of chapmen’s tongues
Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1741, wrote:
Beauty, like supreme dominion
Is but supported by opinion
David Hume’s Essays, Moral and Political, 1742, include:
”Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.”
The person who is widely credited with coining the saying in its current form is Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (née Hamilton), who wrote many books, often under the pseudonym of ‘The Duchess’. In Molly Bawn, 1878, there’s the line ”Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.
Leya 
The John Lyle quote as well as the David Hume one are new to me! Thank you for sharing Ann Christine.
You are welcome!
Well, I’m bound to like it, as I started out a post last week using it! 🙂
http://margaretrosestringer.com/2014/02/05/cees-fun-foto-challenge-3/
AND you also post to Cee’s challenges. Hi there, Leya! – how’s the weather so far up north?
Fun! Well…we had tons of snow a couple of weeks ago, but now, unfortunaltely it is raining and there is very little snow left.
😉
Thank you so much for sharing these quotes! I’ve never read them before…
Well, some of them I hadn’t read either…!
Intriguing. And I think that eye is beautiful.
I’m glad you think so too. There is a clean serenity about it and the photo must have been taken from quite a distance above. I love creative things!
Impressive post Leya ! I am not embarrassed to admit I have never read one of those quotes and thank you for sharing them. Beauty is SO subjective and also pheramonal. If only at 20 I knew what I know now at 57 : )
I hadn’t read them all either. Now you have to teach me a new word – pheramonal is not in my dictionary!? About knowing then what I know now (I’m the same age as you are!)would most certainly have been useful sometimes…but alas it doesn’t work that way…I guess that’s a bit what life is about. Learning. When it’s time to go, we hopefully know what life was about and are ready to leave.
Have a great weekend!
It’s an interesting read ! You also enjoy the weekend!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheromone
Aha, I know it in Swedish, just couldn’t get it in English as it was conjugated! Thank you!
…and today, it has to be one of the most commonly used expression. Nevertheless … just as true as ever.
True, yes. And that’s positive.