“Taste is the good sense of the fine arts.”Luc de Vauvenargues · Reflecții și maxime · 1746 · Maxima 466
Taste is not a list of correct labels, but common sense applied to beauty.
Good sense tells us what is true and fitting in practical life; taste does the same in the order of the arts. It does not mean following the fashionable canon, but recognizing measure, aptness, and what is superfluous. A person with taste knows why a stanza is weak without being able to argue it technically, just as a person with good sense knows a promise is suspect. Both are forms of judgment, not accumulations of rules.
Why it matters Helps anyone who confuses taste with snobbery: real taste is the capacity to judge, not the possession of correct labels.