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To a toad what is beauty? A female with two lovely pop-eyes, a wide mouth, yellow belly, and green spotted back.
Voltaire
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Beauty is subjective and varies significantly across different perspectives and experiences.

In this quote, Voltaire emphasizes the idea that beauty is not universal but instead dependent on individual perception. He uses the example of a toad's perspective, illustrating that what one finds beautiful can vary drastically from another's viewpoint, ultimately reflecting the diversity of standards by which beauty is judged in nature and society.

Themes

BeautySubjectivityPerceptionPhilosophyNature

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about beauty standards in different cultures.

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Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
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It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.
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We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies - it is the first law of nature.
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