Life & Wisdom Quote by Luc de Clapiers

Taste, for Luc de Clapiers, is not a parlor trick; it is a moral organ. In a single line, the 18th-century French moralist (better known as Vauvenargues) yokes aesthetic judgment to inner life, insisting that refinement can’t be faked by etiquette manuals or expensive objects. “To possess taste” sounds like a social credential in ancien regime France, where style functioned as currency and salons rewarded effortless discernment. He punctures that economy by suggesting the real prerequisite isn’t education, rank, or even intelligence, but “some soul” - an interior capacity for feeling, attention, and sincerity.

The sentence works because it flatters and indicts at once. It flatters the reader who wants to believe their preferences are more than fashion; it indicts the reader who uses “taste” as a shield for snobbery. “Some” is doing sly work: he’s not demanding saintliness, just a minimal human depth. Without that depth, taste becomes mere sorting - a cool, bloodless ability to categorize what’s acceptable. With it, taste becomes responsiveness: the ability to be moved, to recognize nuance, to honor proportion without turning it into performance.

Context matters: Vauvenargues wrote in a culture obsessed with surfaces and reputations, and he lived a short life marked by illness and disillusionment. That biographical pressure shows up in the line’s quiet severity. He’s arguing that aesthetics are a test of character, because what you find beautiful reveals what you’re capable of valuing.