To have good sense and ability to express it are the most essential and necessary qualities in companions. When thoughts rise in us fit to utter among familiar friends, there needs but very little care in clothing them.
—Richard Steele (1672–1729) Irish Writer, Politician
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 (1932–2009) American Novelist, Poet, Short-Story Writer
Good taste is the excuse I have given for leading such a bad life.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
If I am ever obscure in my expressions, do not fancy that therefore I am deep. If I were really deep, all the world would understand, though they might not appreciate. The perfectly popular style is the perfectly scientific one. To me an obscurity is a reason for suspecting a fallacy.
—Charles Kingsley (1819–75) English Clergyman, Academic, Historian, Novelist
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.
—Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) French Writer, Academician, Statesman
Generally speaking, an author’s style is a faithful copy of his mind. If you would write a lucid style, let there first be light in your own mind; and if you would write a grand style, you ought to have a grand character.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar, in point of style.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of style.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–59) English Historian, Essayist, Philanthropist
Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Antithesis may be the blossom of wit, but it will never arrive at maturity unless sound sense be the trunk, and truth the root.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
A great writer possesses, so to speak, an individual and unchangeable style, which does not permit him easily to preserve the anonymous.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
Perhaps that is nearly the perfection of good writing which effects that for knowledge which the lens effects for the sunbeam when it condenses its brightness in order to increase its force.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
A sentence well couched takes both the sense and the understanding.—I love not those cart-rope speeches that are longer than the memory of man can measure.
—Owen Feltham (1602–1668) English Essayist
The obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity.
—Quintilian (c.35–c.100 CE) Roman Rhetorician, Literary Critic
What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist’s presence makes itself felt above that of the model. With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul’s style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Playwright, Film Director
With many readers, brilliancy of style passes for affluence of thought; they mistake buttercups in the grass for immeasurable gold mines under ground.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
Obscurity in writing is commonly a proof of darkness in the mind; the greatest learning is to be seen in the greatest plainness.
—John Wilkins (1614–72) English Anglican Clergyman, Author, Administrator
A cultivated style would be like a mask. Everybody knows it’s a mask, and sooner or later you must show yourself—or at least, you show yourself as someone who could not afford to show himself, and so created something to hide behind. You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American Short-Story Writer, Novelist
Style may defined as the proper words in the proper places.
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Irish Satirist
Good taste is the first refuge of the non creative. It is the last ditch stand of the artist.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
Style is what gives value and currency to thoughts.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the motion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary, but everything hath affinities infinite.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
To give style to one’s character—a great and rare art! He exercises it who surveys all that his nature presents in strength and weakness and then moulds it to an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason, and even the weaknesses delight the eye.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off slowly, your agent will sneer at it, your publisher will misunderstand it, and it will take people you have never heard of to convince them by slow degrees that the writer who puts his individual mark on the way he writes will always pay off.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Playwright, Film Director
Style is the image of character.
—Edward Gibbon (1737–94) English Historian, Politician
I hate a style that is wholly flat and regular, that slides along like an eel, and never rises to what one can call an inequality.
—William Shenstone (1714–63) British Poet, Landscape Gardener
It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.
—Salvador Dali (1904–89) Spanish Painter
Taste has no system and no proofs.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher
A man of great common sense and good taste—meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright