Bad Taste Quotes

“It is impossible to have bad taste, but many people have none at all.”
― Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

“He had his choice, and he liked the worst.”
― John Ciardi, The Monster Den: or Look What Happened at My House — and to It

“But the silent stranger could hardly have understood what was passing: she was a German who had not long been in Russia and knew not a word of Russian, and she seemed to be as stupid as she was handsome. She was a novelty and it had become a fashion to invite her to certain parties, sumptuously attired, with her hair dressed as though for a show, and to seat her in the drawing-room as a charming decoration, just as people sometimes borrow from their friends for a special occasion a picture, a statue, a vase, or a fire-screen.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“Americans appreciate bad taste or America wouldn’t look the way America does.”
― P. J. O'Rourke, How the Hell Did This Happen?: A Cautionary Tale of American Democracy

“For – as everyone knows – in libertinism bad taste is a potent force. ("A Woman's Vengeance")”
― Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Les Diaboliques

“Good God, is the man a heathen?’

‘Worse, a capitalist with pretensions of culture.”
― Melanie Jackson, Impression of Bones

“It was poisonous, unnatural to let the dead go with a mere whimpering, a slight murmur, a rose bouquet of good taste. Good taste was out of place in the company of death, death itself was the essence of bad taste. And there must be much rage and saliva in its presence. The body must move and throw itself about, the eyes must roll, the hands should have no peace, and the throat should release all the yearning, despair and outrage that accompany the stupidity of loss.”
― Toni Morrison, Sula

“It seems to me, that if there is a bad taste in your mouth, you spit it out. You don't constantly swallow it back.”
― Steven Knight

“I’d often found it funny how the only reason that writers of self-help books were rich and famous was because of selling their self-help books. Whereas, if there was any truth to these books, the person would have to be rich and famous before writing the book and even then the advice in it would be subjective at best. But then people were stupid. And bad taste, as Bukowski said, created many more millionaires than good taste. If you wanted a good example of people’s bad taste, all you needed to do was to consider the most popular book of all time—the Bible.”
― Keijo Kangur, The Nihilist

“It is against the law of Pineapples for humans to drink water after eating them.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Song of a Nature Lover

“The people with the loudest radios have the worst taste in music.”
― Scott Thompson, Lost in ‘96