Truth to tell man reflects himself in things, he thinks everything beautiful that throws his own image back at him.
 Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (1889). copy citation

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Author Friedrich Nietzsche
Source Twilight of the Idols
Topic truth thought
Date 1889
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by Anthony M. Ludovici
Weblink https://www.gutenberg.org/files/52263/52263-h/52263-h.htm

Context

“Its lowest instinct, the instinct of self-preservation and self-expansion, still radiates in such sublimities. Man imagines the world itself to be overflowing with beauty,—he forgets that he is the cause of it all. He alone has endowed it with beauty. Alas! and only with human all-too-human beauty! Truth to tell man reflects himself in things, he thinks everything beautiful that throws his own image back at him. The judgment "beautiful" is the "vanity of his species." ... A little demon of suspicion may well whisper into the sceptic's ear: is the world really beautified simply because man thinks it beautiful?” source