Le génie enfante, le goût conserve. Le goût est le bon sens du génie; sans le goût, le génie n'est qu'une sublime folie.
François-René de Chateaubriand, in "Essai sur la littérature anglaise (1836): Modèles classiques http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/CadresFenetre?O=NUMM-101390&M=tdm.
Misattributed
“Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.”
Discourse no. 3; vol. 1, p. 57.
Discourses on Art
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Joshua Reynolds 22
English painter, specialising in portraits 1723–1792Related quotes
“A genius doesn't adjust his treatment of a theme to a tyrant's taste”
Source: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)
On the death of his friend John Chute (1776)
As quoted in The National Trust Magazine, Spring 2011, p. 09
“I can see that the Lady has a genius for ruling, whilst I have a genius for not being ruled.”
Letter to Thomas Carlyle (28 September 1845).
E 69
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook E (1775 - 1776)
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 478.