Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

The concept behind this expression, if not the actual words, that beauty is perception rather than objective reality, is very old and can be traced back to ancient Greece c. 300 BC. Shakespeare in Love’s Labour Lost, Act II, Scene I, wrote “Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye.” David Hume, the philosopher, wrote c. 1741, “Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them”. The actual words ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ appear later and are attributed to Margaret Hungerford in her 1878 novel Molly Bawn.