“Sham furniture, sham decoration, sham jewellery, sham wine, sham literature of the lowest type were poured out upon the mediocre masses who eagerly swallowed all the rubbish because it was cheap and, to them, undistinguishable from the real and good. By degrees they were joined by the stupid rich to whom good and bad were naturally undistinguishable. Thus there grew to be an immense public in the world who, soon, so got to prefer cheap and sham that with the distortion which familiarity with inferior things produces on the intellect, they actually ended by viewing with detestation anything truly great in literature or art.”
John Ruskin
