Literal translation
beautiful is not what is beautiful, beautiful is what pleases
Meaning
beauty is not what is beautiful, but what pleases
Explanation
This maxim states, in the form of a folk saying, that beauty is not an objective quality built into things themselves but an effect of the pleasure they give to whoever looks at them. It thus overturns the idea of a fixed, universal beauty and makes it depend instead on taste, attachment, or the feeling of the one who judges. The chiastic construction, which first denies what one would expect and then restates it differently, gives the sentence its proverbial ring and its persuasive force: it settles the matter outright. It is used to defend an aesthetic or romantic choice that others find surprising, for instance to justify finding charming an object, a person, or a place that common opinion would not consider especially remarkable. The register belongs to folk wisdom, close to a proverb, and is passed on orally as plain common sense, with no learned reflection involved. In spirit it echoes the idea that there is no arguing about taste.