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Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety and strangeness. Good people exasperate one's reaso...more

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Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.Vice and virtue are the artist’s materials for an art. From the point of view of form, th...more

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Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

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No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpa...more

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If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what ...more

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[Letter to William Ward, 11 July 1878]Dear Boy, Why don’t you write to me? I don’t know what has become of you.As for me I am ruined. The law suit is ...more

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No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

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To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

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For what is truth? In matters of religion, it is simply the opinion that has survived. In matters of science, it is the ultimate sensation. In matters...more

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There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.The nineteenth century dislike of realism ...more

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The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.

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There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said...more

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Spontaneity is a meticulously prepared art

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Imagination is a quality that was given to man compensate him from whats not. The sense of humor was given to console him from what is.

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If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to h...more