My thoughts on "Beautiful"

This is a response to something a friend was discussing. She wanted to know what people found "beautiful."

First, of course, I want to get a basic definition of beautiful and beauty to work with. Mirriam-Webster says...

Beauty: the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit.


It's a nice catch-all definition. Anything that provides pleasure to the senses, mind, or spirit can be considered beautiful. Though perhaps one might argue over the extent of the pleasure - if it provides only minimal pleasure, is it beautiful? M-W doesn't get into that, so I have to strike off on my own here. I tend to think there has to be some larger quantity or magnitude of pleasure for a thing to be considered beautiful.

Thus, things that could be considered beautiful...
- a well played board game, where every move is as planned to a near-perfect conclusion.
- a nice sunrise, or sunset, with colors not usually seen or in unusual configurations.
- a delicious dessert, one that exceeds expectations.
- family
- certain pieces of music, typically well-written and well-performed.


But of course we recognize that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? I mean, everyone finds different things beautiful. But is there something that EVERYONE finds beautiful? Or are we all so different we none of us can agree on even one thing?

One last thought, on a slight tangent. We always talk about beauty and beautiful in terms of more or less, right? So if one thing might be more beautiful than another thing, is there something that is the most beautiful? Could such a thing exist in reality, or is it an impossibility?