Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Good taste is synonymous with success in all fields of life. It's not a question of money, but of a trained eye.

Taste is only to be educated by contemplation, not of the tolerably good but of the truly excellent. I therefore show you only the best works; and when you are grounded in these, you will have a standard for the rest, which you will know how to value, without overrating them.

One cannot develop taste from what is of average quality but only from the very best.

To possess taste, one must have some soul.

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

Good taste rejects excessive nicety.

Those art lovers who pride themselves mostly on *taste* usually possess no other talent.

A person with taste is merely one who can recognize the greatest beauty in the simplest things.

I believe that bad taste is vulgar. It's like cursing. I think the world can be saved through design, because what is the most distasteful thing someone can do? Kill someone. So, good taste is the opposite of that.

Good taste ruins certain true spiritual values: such as taste itself.

Good taste has everything to do with being cultured and being refined, and if art has to do with anything, it has to do with being human.

Good taste" is a virtue of the keepers of museums. If you scorn bad taste, you will have neither painting nor dancing, neither palaces nor gardens.

A good taste is often unconscious; a just taste is always conscious.

Be aroused by poetry; structure yourself with propriety, refine yourself with music.

Perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to oar moral nature in its purity and perfection.

When you're a connoiseur you look for interesting rather than good.

If they who understand the utmost refinement of any art will enjoy the perfection of it in a manner superior to other men, will they not amply pay for that advantage in feeling more than other men the imperfection of it, which in the natural course of things must so much oftener fall in their way?

Good taste is his religion, his morality, his standard, and his test.

Taste has never been corrupted by simplicity.

To understand bad taste one must have very good taste.

Delicacy of taste has the same effect as delicacy of passion; it enlarges the sphere both of our happiness and our misery.

Taste is the power of relishing or rejecting whatever is offered for the entertainment of the imagination.

There are some readers who have never read an essay on taste; and if they take my advice they never will, for they can no more improve their taste by so doing than they could improve their appetite or digestion by studying a cookery-book.

Too much good taste can be boring

To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.