Fashion’s smile has given wit to dullness and grace to deformity, and has brought everything into vogue, by turns, except virtue.

Approval from the current taste can make almost anything look good for a while. A dull idea becomes clever when it is in vogue, an awkward thing becomes stylish, and none of it involves the thing itself changing. What never quite comes into fashion is plain decency, because it offers nothing to signal with and cannot be adopted for a season. That is useful to know about the machinery.

Separate the things you value because they are currently admired from the things you would value in an empty room. Keep investing in the second kind even when nobody is impressed by them.