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Oscar Wilde
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Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting.
- Oscar Wilde
#Art
#Good People
#Good
#People
#Romantic
I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.
- Oscar Wilde
#Life
#Love
#Man
#Young Man
#Young
Perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for men. There would be more joy in life if we were to accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes.
- Oscar Wilde
#Beautiful
#Dress
#Joy
#Life
#Men
There is always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies.
- Oscar Wilde
#About
#Always
#Mean
#People
#Something
I have never given adoration to any body except myself.
- Oscar Wilde
#Adoration
#Body
#Except
#Myself
#Never
In designing the scenery and costumes for any of Shakespeare's plays, the first thing the artist has to settle is the best date for the drama. This should be determined by the general spirit of the play more than by any actual historical references which may occur in it.
- Oscar Wilde
#Best
#Drama
#Historical
#Scenery
#Spirit
While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.
- Oscar Wilde
#Actor
#Ask
#Look
#Realism
#Romance
'The Lady's World' should be made the recognized organ for the expression of women's opinions on all subjects of literature, art and modern life, and yet it should be a magazine that men could read with pleasure.
- Oscar Wilde
#Art
#Life
#Men
#Women
#World
I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of simple decorative arts. It would be a golden hour to the children.
- Oscar Wilde
#Children
#Day
#Golden
#School
#Simple
The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman's heart.
- Oscar Wilde
#Art
#Done
#Good
#Head
#Heart
The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.
- Oscar Wilde
#Anything
#Life
#Like
#Looks
#World
Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all, you must not strip it of vitality.
- Oscar Wilde
#Beauty
#Dangerous
#Nothing
#Touch
#Young
Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.
- Oscar Wilde
#Literature
#Past
#Places
#Rest
#Theme
I have a dining room done in different shades of white, with white cushions embroidered in yellow silk: the effect is absolutely delightful and the room beautiful.
- Oscar Wilde
#Beautiful
#Done
#Room
#Shades
#White
Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.
- Oscar Wilde
#Art
#Disturbing
#Force
#Individualism
The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.
- Oscar Wilde
#Abstract
#Age
#Best
#Ideal
#Spirit
Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.
- Oscar Wilde
#Deal
#Great
#House
#Now
#Trying
Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.
- Oscar Wilde
#Art
#Day
#Desire
#Doing
#Problems
Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it.
- Oscar Wilde
#Aesthetic
#Personality
#Understand
#Why
In its primary aspect, a painting has no more spiritual message than an exquisite fragment of Venetian glass. The channels by which all noble and imaginative work in painting should touch the soul are not those of the truths of lives.
- Oscar Wilde
#Glass
#Painting
#Soul
#Spiritual
#Work
Writing bores me so.
- Oscar Wilde
#Bores
#Me
#Writing
I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.
- Oscar Wilde
#Delightful
#Simply
#Society
#Tragedy
The function of the artist is to invent, not to chronicle.
- Oscar Wilde
#Artist
#Chronicle
#Function
#Invent
What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.
- Oscar Wilde
#Art
#Duty
#Lying
#Old
#Our
Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.
- Oscar Wilde
#Begin
#End
#Never
#Romance
#Science
Let us have no machine-made ornament at all; it is all bad and worthless and ugly.
- Oscar Wilde
#Bad
#Ornament
#Ugly
#Us
#Worthless
There's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about.
- Oscar Wilde
#Devotion
#Man
#Nothing
#Woman
#World
How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.
- Oscar Wilde
#Expensive
#Far
#Man
#Marriage
#More
Yes, there is a terrible moral in 'Dorian Gray' - a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.
- Oscar Wilde
#Book
#Fear
#Find
#Moral
#Will
In judging of a beautiful statue, the aesthetic faculty is absolutely and completely gratified by the splendid curves of those marble lips that are dumb to our complaint, the noble modelling of those limbs that are powerless to help us.
- Oscar Wilde
#Beautiful
#Curves
#Dumb
#Marble
#Statue
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
- Oscar Wilde
#About
#Always
#Emotions
#Love
#People
A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.
- Oscar Wilde
#Art
#Critic
#Personality
#Without
#Work
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
- Oscar Wilde
#Insane
#Matters
#Opinion
#Our
In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.
- Oscar Wilde
#Good
#Life
#Modern
#Nothing
#World
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
- Oscar Wilde
#America
#Myself
#Never
#Say
#Would
There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.
- Oscar Wilde
#Authority
#Bad
#Mob
#Monarch
#Necessity
It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.
- Oscar Wilde
#Admire
#Art
#Equally
#Only
#Who
The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.
- Oscar Wilde
#Deal
#Great
#He
#Nothing
#Too Much
One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.
- Oscar Wilde
#Only
#Past
#People
#Way
#Which
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
- Oscar Wilde
#Book
#Books
#Moral
#Thing
#Well
It is always the unreadable that occurs.
- Oscar Wilde
#Always
#Occurs
The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.
- Oscar Wilde
#Advantage
#Astray
#Emotions
#Lead
#Us
As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
- Oscar Wilde
#Daughter
#Long
#Look
#Satisfied
#Woman
Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
- Oscar Wilde
#Cannot
#Death
#Explain
#Facts
#Two
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
- Oscar Wilde
#Basis
#Optimism
#Sheer
#Terror
Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.
- Oscar Wilde
#Duty
#Fiction
#James
#Mr
#Painful
It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
- Oscar Wilde
#Bills
#Hope
#Live
#Memory
#Only
There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate - not to the artist, but to the public, blinding them to all but harming the artist not at all.
- Oscar Wilde
#Art
#Impossible
#Law
#Newspaper
#Random
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.
- Oscar Wilde
#Blame
#Feel
#Luxury
#Right
#Us
Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.
- Oscar Wilde
#Ambition
#Germ
#Growth
#Proceeds
#Which
London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce the serious people, or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don't know.
- Oscar Wilde
#Full
#Know
#People
#Serious
#Whether
No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.
- Oscar Wilde
#Art
#Beauty
#Flower
#Love
#Nature
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
- Oscar Wilde
#Art
#Life
#Mirrors
#Really
#Spectator
America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
- Oscar Wilde
#Always
#America
#Been
#Before
#Up
No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
- Oscar Wilde
#About
#Age
#Her
#Looks
#Woman
All art is quite useless.
- Oscar Wilde
#Art
#Quite
#Useless
If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.
- Oscar Wilde
#Art
#Beauty
#Ethics
#Rich
#Work
A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
- Oscar Wilde
#Careful
#Choice
#Enemies
#Man
#Too
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
- Oscar Wilde
#Beautiful
#Charming
#Fault
#Find
#Ugly
In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.
- Oscar Wilde
#America
#Ever
#Forever
#Four
#Journalism
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
- Oscar Wilde
#Books
#Own
#Shame
#Show
#World
If one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk.
- Oscar Wilde
#Bad
#Good Music
#Good
#Music
#People
I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.
- Oscar Wilde
#Blue
#Day
#Every Day
#Find
#Live
Charity creates a multitude of sins.
- Oscar Wilde
#Charity
#Creates
#Multitude
#Sins
Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.
- Oscar Wilde
#Everyone
#Good
#Opinion
#Same
#Society
Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety and strangeness. Good people exasperate one's reason; bad people stir one's imagination.
- Oscar Wilde
#Art
#Bad
#Good
#Imagination
#View
Only the shallow know themselves.
- Oscar Wilde
#Know
#Only
#Shallow
#Themselves
Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.
- Oscar Wilde
#Courage
#Strength
#Temptation
#Weakness
In married life three is company and two none.
- Oscar Wilde
#Company
#Life
#None
#Three
#Two
Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
- Oscar Wilde
#Being
#Man
#Poor
#Sometimes
#Thrift
In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances, invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.
- Oscar Wilde
#Disappointment
#Man
#Road
#Science
#Work
There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.
- Oscar Wilde
#Difficult
#Large
#Marry
#Nose
#Nothing
I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
- Oscar Wilde
#Anything
#Better
#Principles
#World
There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.
- Oscar Wilde
#Community
#Money
#Nothing
#Poor
#Rich
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.
- Oscar Wilde
#Art
#Result
#Temperament
#Unique
#Work
I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.
- Oscar Wilde
#Force
#I Can
#Reason
#Stand
#Unfair
Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.
- Oscar Wilde
#Always
#Convincing
#Often
#Vulgar
The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.
- Oscar Wilde
#Critical
#Imagination
#Imitates
#Spirit
Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.
- Oscar Wilde
#Family Life
#Family
#Life
#Only
#Seen
There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
- Oscar Wilde
#Afraid
#Away
#Others
#Things
#Up
Hatred is blind, as well as love.
- Oscar Wilde
#Blind
#Hatred
#Love
#Well
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
- Oscar Wilde
#Democracy
#Means
#People
#Simply
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.
- Oscar Wilde
#Because
#Curious
#Men
#Tired
#Women
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.
- Oscar Wilde
#Always
#Difference
#Men
#Never
#Women
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
- Oscar Wilde
#Information
#Little
#Sad
#Thing
#Useless
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
- Oscar Wilde
#Death
#Good
#Live
#Reputation
#Survive
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
- Oscar Wilde
#Always
#Man
#Motives
#Stupid
#Thing
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.
- Oscar Wilde
#Bad
#Fiction
#Good
#Happily
#Means
Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.
- Oscar Wilde
#Believe
#Impossible
#Man
#Never
Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.
- Oscar Wilde
#Aggravating
#Calmness
#Nothing
#Than
Those whom the gods love grow young.
- Oscar Wilde
#Gods
#Grow
#Love
#Whom
#Young
The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.
- Oscar Wilde
#Contradict
#Other
#People
#Well
#Wise
Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.
- Oscar Wilde
#Common Sense
#Die
#Mistakes
#People
Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
- Oscar Wilde
#Choice
#Evils
#He
#Pessimist
#Two
The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.
- Oscar Wilde
#Dominate
#London
#Man
#Who
#World
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
- Oscar Wilde
#Everything
#Know
#Nothing
#People
#Two
Biography lends to death a new terror.
- Oscar Wilde
#Biography
#Death
#Lends
#New
#Terror
If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
- Oscar Wilde
#Bad
#Good
#Optimism
#Stupidity
#World
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
- Oscar Wilde
#Difference
#Journalism
#Literature
#Read
Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.
- Oscar Wilde
#Anybody
#Country
#Good
#Temptations
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