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

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 ~












Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to ...
Show MoreMore Oscar Wilde quotes
"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...
"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...
"If one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk.
"No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
"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...
"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 ...
"Spontaneity is a meticulously prepared art
"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 beau...
"Art, even the art of fullest scope and widest vision, can never really show us the external world. All that it shows us is our own soul, the one world...
"One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
"Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.
"Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself.She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance.
"Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.
"I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful...