Literal translation
what is beautiful is not beautiful, what pleases is beautiful
Meaning
beauty is not what is beautiful, but what pleases
Explanation
This proverb offers a concise aesthetic reflection on the relative nature of beauty: it first sets aside the idea that beauty would rest on some fixed, objective standard making a thing beautiful in itself, before asserting that it rests instead in the effect produced, in the pleasure or delight the thing arouses in the one who beholds it. The chiastic construction, repeating the adjective bèu twice around the demonstrative pronoun ço (this, that), gives the proverb an almost philosophical air, worthy of a learned aphorism handed down by oral tradition, even though it belongs entirely to popular lore. This idea that beauty is not an intrinsic quality but a subjective effect echoes ancient aesthetic debates on the beautiful and the pleasing, condensed here into a brief, memorable, rhythmic formula. The proverb is said in a reflective register, to relativize an overly sharp aesthetic judgment or to recall that tastes vary from one person to another, with no single judgment holding absolute authority.