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It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist's life is that he cannot realize his ideal. But the true tragedy that dogs the steps of most artist...more

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

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It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way.

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That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with onesel...more

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If something cannot be done to check, or at least to modify, our monstrous worship of facts, art will become sterile and beauty will pass away from th...more

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Art creates an incomparable and unique effect, and, having done so, passes on to other things. Nature, upon the other hand, forgetting that that imita...more

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I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.

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To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautifu...more

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Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming about him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his prejudices,...more

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We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it int...more

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It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.

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...art had no moral responsibility. Art, he argued, should strive only to be a beautiful object entirely separate from its creator.

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An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.

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Utterly, irrevocably, lost

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That is one of the great secrets of life Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only t...more