“I am not able to judge whether I have only taste, or originality as well. The former I can see distinctly, but not the latter, or only quite indistinctly. And perhaps it has to be like that, & you see only what you have, not what you are. Someone who does not lie is original enough. For, after all, the originality that would be worth wishing for cannot be a sort of trick, or an idiosyncrasy, however marked.”
Taste is refinement of sensibility; but sensibility does not act, it merely assimilates.”
“The faculty of ‘taste’ cannot create a new organism, only rectify one that is already there. Taste loosens screws & tightens screws, it doesn’t create a new original work.”
(Hence, I think, a great creator needs no taste: the child is born into the World well formed.)
“Taste can delight, but not seize.”
All quotations from ‘Culture and Value’, Wittgenstein, p.68e
