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Who really said it

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them

Written by David Hume 1711–1776 · Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian & essayist
Verified Free to reuse

The thought — and most of the words — are genuinely Hume’s, from his essay “Of the Standard of Taste” (first published 1757 in Four Dissertations). His actual sentence runs: “Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.” The circulating short form compresses that into “Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them” — the same idea, with the clause “exists…in the mind which contemplates them” kept verbatim.

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them” David Hume, "Of the Standard of Taste," Four Dissertations (1757)

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Provenance

The source

Work
“Of the Standard of Taste”
Collection
Four Dissertations (1757)
Author
David Hume (1711–1776)
Original wording
“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them…”

Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others.

Hume’s full sentence from “Of the Standard of Taste.” The popular quote keeps the middle clause and drops the opening negation — “Beauty is no quality in things themselves” — which is the very point Hume was making.

Of the Standard of Taste — full text at davidhume.org

How we verified this

  • The authoritative scholarly text at davidhume.org carries the sentence verbatim: “Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.”
  • The Online Library of Liberty reproduces the same sentence and attributes it to “Of the Standard of Taste” in Essays, Moral, Political, Literary.
  • The trimmed form — “Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them” — is what circulates on aggregators like Goodreads and BrainyQuote, credited to Hume.
Public domain

“Of the Standard of Taste” was first published in 1757 (in Hume’s Four Dissertations), well before 1931, and Hume wrote in English, so the text is firmly in the public domain in the United States.

Fact-check

Right author, trimmed words

This one isn’t a fake — it’s a genuine Hume line that lost some words on its way through the quote sites.

Quote aggregators compressed

Hume actually wrote “Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.” The circulating version — “Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them” — drops the opening negation and folds the two clauses together. See the verbatim text at davidhume.org.

General circulation

The trimmed phrase “Beauty in things…” slightly muddies Hume’s point, which was precisely that beauty is not in things but only in the mind that contemplates them — his classic statement of aesthetic subjectivism in “Of the Standard of Taste”.

The attribution to Hume is correct and the source is real — his 1757 essay “Of the Standard of Taste”; only the exact phrasing has been shortened.

Context

Why it mattered

Hume made this remark not as a throwaway compliment to beauty but to set up a genuine puzzle: if beauty is only a feeling in the mind, and every mind feels differently, how can we ever say one judgment of taste is better than another? “Of the Standard of Taste” is his attempt to answer that — to reconcile the subjectivity of beauty with the everyday conviction that some critics really do have better taste than others.

His solution points to the verdicts of experienced, unprejudiced critics as a practical standard, even though beauty itself remains a sentiment rather than a property of the object.

Beauty is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.

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Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Of the Standard of Taste — full textdavidhume.org

The authoritative scholarly edition of the essay; contains the sentence verbatim.
David Hume on the Perception of Beautyoll.libertyfund.org

Online Library of Liberty quote page citing the essay as the source.
Hume's political and literary essaysgutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg edition of Hume's political and literary essays (this edition does not contain 'Of the Standard of Taste').
David Humeen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the philosopher and overview of his aesthetics.
Goodreads — circulating short formgoodreads.com

Shows the trimmed popular wording attributed to Hume.

The true author

About David Hume

David Hume

1711–1776 · Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian & essayist

David Hume (1711–1776) was a central figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, best known for his empiricism and skepticism in works like A Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In his essay “Of the Standard of Taste” he argued that beauty is not an objective property of things but a sentiment in the mind of the beholder — a founding statement of modern aesthetic subjectivism.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

David Hume, “Of the Standard of Taste,” in Four Dissertations (London: A. Millar, 1757); reprinted in Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary.

MLA (9th ed.)

Hume, David. “Of the Standard of Taste.” Four Dissertations, A. Millar, 1757.

APA (7th ed.)

Hume, D. (1757). Of the standard of taste. In Four dissertations. A. Millar.

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/beauty-in-things-exists-in-the-mind-which-contemplates-them

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