“These questions of taste, of feeling, of inheritance, need no settlement. Every one carries his own inch-rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.”
The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
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Henry Adams 311
journalist, historian, academic, novelist 1838–1918Related quotes
“The true barbarian is he who thinks every thing barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.”
No. 333
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)
"Notes on 'Camp'" (1964), note 54, p. 291
Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)
Context: 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.
Le bon goût, le tact et le bon ton, ont plus de rapport que n'affectent de le croire les Gens de Lettres. Le tact, c'est le bon goût appliqué au main- tien et à la conduite; le bon ton, c'est le bon goût appliqué aux discours et à la conversation.
Maximes et Pensées, #427
Maxims and Considerations, #427
“…taste is free, and all styles are good which amuse.”
Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)
“The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.”
"Reading", p. 6
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)
“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
“He who has an opinion of his own, but depends upon the opinion and taste of others, is a slave.”
As quoted in Day's Collacon: an Encyclopaedia of Prose Quotations (1884), p. 639
Adams specifies that he refers "only to the Roman of William of Lorris, which dates from the death of Queen Blanche and of all good things, about 1250". He describes the rather cynical continuation by Jean de Meung, about 1300, as "beyond our horizon".
Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)