Is ‘pretty’ enough?

From The Smart Set, about the word "pretty": " 'Pretty' has gone out of favor because we are greedy, and want the merely pretty to be fully beautiful, and so we go around calling things beautiful that are pretty. … There's something self-flattering about it — describing a thing as beautiful makes the speaker appear more sensitive to beauty. Conversely, 'pretty' always sounds like an understatement, and as such can actually be more flattering to the thing described."