“Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.”

— Alexander Pope

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

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly." by Alexander Pope?

Alexander Pope photo

Alexander Pope 158

eighteenth century English poet 1688–1744

Related quotes

“Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.”

Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) English painter, specialising in portraits

Discourse no. 3; vol. 1, p. 57.
Discourses on Art

“Neatness begets order; but from order to taste there is the same difference as from taste to genius, or from love to friendship.”

Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) Swiss poet

No. 583
Aphorisms on Man (c. 1788)

“The more obscure our tastes, the greater the proof of our genius.”

Jennifer Donnelly book Revolution

Source: Revolution

“A genius doesn't adjust his treatment of a theme to a tyrant's taste”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Source: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)

“He was my counsel in affairs, was my oracle in taste, the standard to whom I submitted my trifles, and the genius that presided over poor Strawberry.”

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

On the death of his friend John Chute (1776)
As quoted in The National Trust Magazine, Spring 2011, p. 09

“Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite; and this rare conjuncture, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant.”

François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) French writer, politician, diplomat and historian

As quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893) selected and compiled by James Wood.

“Let us never forget that, to be profited, that is, to be spiritually improved in knowledge, faith, holiness, joy, and love, is the end of hearing sermons, and not merely to have our taste gratified by genius, eloquence, and oratory.”

John Angell James (1785–1859) British abolitionist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 478.

“I am heartily glad to witness your veneration for a Book which to say nothing of its holiness or authority, contains more specimens of genius and taste than any other volume in existence.”

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) British writer

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 33.

“… a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.”

George Bernard Shaw Caesar and Cleopatra

Source: Caesar and Cleopatra

“Universality is the distinguishing mark of genius. There is no such thing as a special genius, a genius for mathematics, or for music, or even for chess, but only a universal genius. … The theory of special genius, according to which for instance, it is supposed that a musical genius should be a fool at other subjects, confuses genius with talent. … There are many kinds of talent, but only one kind of genius, and that is able to choose any kind of talent and master it.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 112.

Related topics