'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder'

What's the meaning of the phrase 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder'? 'Beauty in the eye of the beholder' has a literal meaning - that the perception of beauty is subjective - what one person finds beautiful another may not. What's the origin of the phrase 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder'? This saying first appeared in the 3rd century BC in Greek. It didn't appear in English and in its current form in print until the 19th century, but in the meantime there were various written forms that expressed much the same thought. In 1588, the English dramatist John Lyly, in his Euphues and his England, wrote: "...as neere is Fancie to Beautie, as the pricke to the Rose, as the stalke to the rynde, as the earth to the roote." Shakespeare expressed a similar sentiment in Love's Labours Lost, 1588: Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean, Needs not the painted flourish of your praise: Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye, Not utter'd by base sale of chapmen's tongues