Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Great artists often dismiss lesser works, showing that high standards can lead to disdain for mediocrity.
In plain terms
People who make great art often look down on small art.
What can you take from it?
High standards can lead to contempt for lesser works.

Where it applies

  • art criticism
  • creative work
  • professional life

Putting it to work

  • evaluate your standards
  • respect all art
  • avoid elitism

Questions to consider

  • Can great art and small art coexist?
  • Is elitism necessary for quality?

Another view

It dismisses the value that small art holds for others.

More from F. Scott Fitzgerald

  1. How strange to have failed as a social creature-even criminals do not fail that way-they are the law's 'Loyal Opposition,' so to speak. But the insane are alwa…

    Permalink to quote #14
  2. Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

    Permalink to quote #16
  3. Isn't Hollywood a dump-in the human sense of the word. A hideous town, pointed up by the insulting gardens of its rich, full of the human spirit at a new low o…

    Permalink to quote #13

Related quotes

  1. Unless you think you can do better than Tolstoy, we don't need you.

    James MichenerJames Michener quote #54
  2. The qualities of a second-rate writer can easily be defined, but a first-rate writer can only be experienced. It is just the thing in him which escapes analysi…

    Willa CatherWilla Cather quote #57
  3. What do you think of Puccini? [ Britten: 'I think his operas are dreadful.' ] No, Ben, you are wrong. He wrote marvellous operas, but dreadful music.

    Dmitri ShostakovichDmitri Shostakovich quote #12