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I have found that people for whom English is a second language have the biggest problems with when to use an article with an abstract noun–the name of a quality or idea. For example, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Beauty is a noun of quality; it stands in for beauty in general, and therefore does not need an article. But about a particular painting you could state that “the beauty of that painting is in the eye of the beholder.” It is only the beauty of the single painting about which you are talking. This use of the is called a “definite article.”