"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...
Art, like Nature, has her monsters
More Oscar Wilde quotes
"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...
"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...
"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...
"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...
"I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.
"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...
"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,...
"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...
"It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.
"...art had no moral responsibility. Art, he argued, should strive only to be a beautiful object entirely separate from its creator.
"An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.
"The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.The critic is he who can translate into another ma...
"every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not...
"Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show...