Skip to main content

Creativity Quote by Eugene Delacroix

"A taste for simplicity cannot endure for long"

About this Quote

Delacroix fires this off like a warning label on a plain white wall. For a Romantic painter who lived on turbulence, color, and historical spectacle, “a taste for simplicity” isn’t a virtue; it’s a phase, a fashion accessory, a brief flirtation with self-denial that collapses under the pressure of lived experience. The line has bite because it treats simplicity not as moral clarity but as appetite: a “taste.” Tastes change. They get bored. They crave seasoning.

The subtext is a critique of any aesthetic program that tries to turn restraint into a permanent identity. Delacroix watched the 19th century churn through competing doctrines: Neoclassical discipline versus Romantic excess, the academy’s clean lines versus the messy truths of emotion and politics. In that climate, simplicity isn’t neutral; it’s a stance with social and institutional muscle, often coded as seriousness, purity, “good taste.” Delacroix punctures that prestige. He implies that the human sensorium - and by extension, art - resists staying on a starvation diet.

Context matters: this is an era when painting is being asked to justify itself, to behave, to be edifying. Delacroix’s work argues the opposite: complexity is not decadence but honesty. His best canvases don’t merely depict drama; they metabolize it. The sentence lands today because it reads like a diagnosis of minimalist cycles in design, branding, even lifestyle culture: simplicity sells as an idea, then boredom arrives, and maximalism comes roaring back.

Quote Details

TopicWisdom
SourceHelp us find the source
Cite

Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Delacroix, Eugene. (2026, January 16). A taste for simplicity cannot endure for long. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/a-taste-for-simplicity-cannot-endure-for-long-132931/

Chicago Style
Delacroix, Eugene. "A taste for simplicity cannot endure for long." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/a-taste-for-simplicity-cannot-endure-for-long-132931/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"A taste for simplicity cannot endure for long." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/a-taste-for-simplicity-cannot-endure-for-long-132931/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Eugene Add to List
A Taste for Simplicity Cannot Endure for Long - Delacroix Quote
Click to enlarge Portrait | Landscape

About the Author

France Flag

Eugene Delacroix (April 26, 1798 - August 13, 1863) was a Artist from France.

7 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes

Ritchie Blackmore, Musician
Francois Truffaut, Director
Francois Truffaut