Named source · 1904

Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres Quotes by Henry Adams: Context & Meanings

1 quotation linked to Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres by or associated with Henry Adams, with source notes, explanations and related topics.

More by Henry Adams

Read the source

Open a public or archival text connected with these quotations

Use these links when you want to inspect the wording in its wider work or edition.

Primary / edition source · gutenberg.org ↗

Represented passages

1 quotations with source context and meaning

Source identified1

taste is free, and all styles are good which amuse;

Image design Lavender

Read & copy

“taste is free, and all styles are good which amuse;”

Henry Adams

Voice: Authorial / signed preface voice · Henry Adams (guide-narrator)

Meaning & context

Adams allows room for personal aesthetic preference even while asking readers to understand the very different energy and values expressed by medieval architecture.

Source details

Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres, Chapter I, Project Gutenberg #4584. Adams’s playful guide-narrator says that “taste is free, and all styles are good which amuse” while comparing Norman seriousness with later French architectural taste before asking the reader to understand the energy expressed by Norman art. It is rhetorical aesthetic commentary rather than a complete or empirical theory of artistic value.

Open a public or archival text connected with these quotations

Prominent ideas connected with the quotations represented here

1 quotations with source context and meaning

Continue through other sources by Henry Adams