Taste

(190 votes)   A man of great common sense and good taste -- meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.

George Bernard Shaw
1856-1950, Irish-born British Dramatist

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(164 votes)   Everyone carries his own inch rule of taste, and amuse himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.

Henry Brooks Adams
1838-1918, American Historian

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(158 votes)   Taste cannot be controlled by law.

Thomas Jefferson
1743-1826, Third President of the USA

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(120 votes)   I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines; and, I believe, Dorothy, you'll own I have been pretty fond of an old wife.

Oliver Goldsmith
1728-1774, Anglo-Irish Author, Poet, Playwright

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(113 votes)   The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture, that tastes which pose only innocent ethical issues as the property of a minority become corrupting when they become more established. Taste is context, and the context has changed.

Susan Sontag
1933-, American Essayist

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(103 votes)   To possess taste, one must have some soul.

Marquis De Vauvenargues
1715-1747, French Moralist

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(101 votes)   One of the surest evidences of an elevated taste is the power of enjoying works of impassioned terrorism, in poetry, and painting. The man who can look at impassioned subjects of terror with a feeling of exultation may be certain he has an elevated taste.

Benjamin Haydon
1786-1846, British Artist

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(100 votes)   Without taste genius is only a sublime kind of folly. That sure touch which the lyre gives back the right note and nothing more, is even a rarer gift than the creative faculty itself.

Vicomte De Chateaubriand
1768-1848, French Politician, Writer

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(98 votes)   Bad taste is a species of bad morals.

Christian Nevell Bovee
1820-1904, American Author, Lawyer

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(95 votes)   I think ''taste'' is a social concept and not an artistic one. I'm willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else's living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another's brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.

John Updike
1932-, American Novelist, Critic

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(95 votes)   The discovery of the good taste of bad taste can be very liberating. The man who insists on high and serious pleasures is depriving himself of pleasure; he continually restricts what he can enjoy; in the constant exercise of his good taste he will eventually price himself out of the market, so to speak. Here Camp taste supervenes upon good taste as a daring and witty hedonism. It makes the man of good taste cheerful, where before he ran the risk of being chronically frustrated. It is good for the digestion.

Susan Sontag
1933-, American Essayist

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(92 votes)   All of life is a dispute over taste and tasting.

Friedrich Nietzsche
1844-1900, German Philosopher

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(86 votes)   Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.

Pablo Picasso
1881-1973, Spanish Artist

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(86 votes)   The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

Gilbert K. Chesterton
1874-1936, British Author

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website

(80 votes)   Taste has no system and no proofs.

Susan Sontag
1933-, American Essayist

Rate this quote: (bad)<> (good)
copy to your blog, myspace, or website