The Wisdom of Oscar Wilde Read online

The Picture of Dorian Gray

  And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

  The Picture of Dorian Gray

  If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.

  The Picture of Dorian Gray

  The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.

  The Picture of Dorian Gray

  Algernon: All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

  The Importance of Being Earnest

  Cecily: And of course a man who is much talked about is always very attractive.

  The Importance of Being Earnest

  Gwendolen: The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man. And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not? And I don’t like that. It makes men so very attractive.

  The Importance of Being Earnest

  When man acts he is a puppet. When he describes he is a poet.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  The man who regards his past is a man who deserves to have no future to look forward to.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  ART

  Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic. There is a very wide difference.

  “The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.

  “Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young”

  The true artist is the man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself.

  “The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  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.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at.... But they are quite impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  It is through Art, and through Art only, that we can realise our perfection; through Art, and through Art only, that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  For who is the true critic but he who bears within himself the dreams, and ideas, and feelings of myriad generation, and he to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure?

  “The Critic as Artist”

  For the meaning of any beautiful created thing is, at least, as much in the soul of him who looks at it, as it was in his soul who wrought it.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  The Philistine element in life is not the failure to understand Art. Charming people such as fishermen, shepherds, plough-boys, peasants and the like know nothing about Art, and are the very salt of the earth.

  De Profundis

  Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  The true tragedy that dogs the steps of most artists is that they realise their ideal too absolutely. For, when the ideal is realised, it is robbed of its wonder and mystery, and becomes simply a new starting-point for an ideal that is other than itself.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  Art is not something that you can take or leave. It is a necessity of human life.

  “House Decoration”

  Noble and beautiful designs are never the results of idle fancy or purposeless daydreaming. They come only as the accumulation of habits of long and delightful observation.

  “House Decoration”

  Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all.

  “House Decoration”

  All archaeological pictures that make you say “How curious!” all sentimental pictures that make you say “How sad!” all historical pictures that make you say “How interesting!” all such pictures that do not immediately give you such artistic joy as to make you say “How beautiful!” are bad pictures.

  “Lecture to Art Students”

  For an artist to marry his model is as fatal as a gourmet to marry his cook: the one gets no sittings, and the other gets no dinner.

  “London Models”

  Nor do I accept the dictum that only a painter is a judge of painting. I say that only an artist is a judge of art; there is a wide difference.

  “Mr. Whistler’s Ten O’Clock”

  The English public, as a mass, takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral....

  “Mr. Wilde’s Bad Case”

  A great artist invents a type, and Life tries to copy it, to reproduce it in a popular form, like an enterprising publisher.

  “The Decay of Lying”

  Art is our spirited protest, our gallant attempt to teach Nature her proper place.

  “The Decay of Lying”

  To look at a thing is very different to seeing it. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then, and then only, does it come into existence.

  “The Decay of Lying”

  If we wish to understand a nation by means of its art, let us look at its architecture or its music.

  “The Decay of Lying”

  The only portraits in which one believes are portraits where there is very little of the sitter and a very great deal of the artist.

  “The Decay of Lying”

  In a very ugly and sensible age the arts borrow, not from life, but from each other.

  “Pen, Pencil and Poison”

  Also in “The Decay of Lying”

  Neither art nor science knows anything of moral approval or disapproval.

  “Pen, Pencil and Poison”

  Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong.

  “Lecture to Art Students”

  But, you will say, modern dress, that is bad. If you cannot paint black cloth, you could not have painted silken doublets.

  “Lecture to Art Students”

  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 the world its own shame. That is all.

  The Picture of Dorian Gray

  The moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or dishonest tradesman.

  “The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has ever known.

  “The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  In Art, the public accept what has been, because they cannot alter it, not because they appreciate it. They swallow their classics whole, and never taste them.

  “The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  In France, in fact, they limit the journalist and allow the artist almost perfect freedom. Here we allow absolute freedom to the journalist, and entirely limit the artist.

  “The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  Whenever a community or a powerful section of a community, or a government of any kind, attempts to dictate to the artist what he is to do, Art either entirely vanishes, or becomes stereotyped, or degenerates into a low and ignoble form of craft.

  “The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is.

  “The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to [the public], and whenever it appears they get so angry and bewilde
red that they always use two stupid expressions—one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true. The former expression has reference to style; the latter to subject-matter.

  “The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  If a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise authority over it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot receive any artistic impression from it at all.

  “The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  For an educated person’s ideas of Art are drawn naturally from what Art has been, whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what Art has never been; and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure it by a standard on the rejection of which its real perfection depends.

  “The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  In a very ugly and sensible age, the arts borrow, not from life, but from each other.

  “The Decay of Lying”

  All bad art comes from returning to Life and Nature, and elevating them into ideals.

  “The Decay of Lying”

  In art good intentions are not the smallest value. All bad art is the result of good intentions.

  De Profundis

  Art never expresses anything but itself.

  “The Decay of Lying”

  Paradox though it may seem—and paradoxes are always dangerous things—it is none the less true that Life imitates art far more than Art imitates life.

  “The Decay of Lying”

  When Art is more varied, Nature will, no doubt, be more varied also.

  “The Decay of Lying”

  Art never expresses anything but itself.

  “The Decay of Lying”

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

  “The Decay of Lying”

  Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything.

  “The Decay of Lying”

  For there is no art where there is no style, and no style where there is no unity, and unity is of the individual.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses nothing.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  The difference between objective and subjective work is one of external form merely. It is accidental, not essential. All artistic creation is absolutely subjective.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  There are two ways of disliking art, Ernest. One is to dislike it. The other, to like it rationally.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  For the real artist is he who proceeds, not from feeling to form, but from form to thought and passion.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  Indeed, so far from its being true that the artist is the best judge of art, a really great artist can never judge of other people’s work at all and can hardly, in fact, judge of his own.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  Bad artists always admire each other’s work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  LITERATURE

  More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read.

  The Importance of Being Earnest

  Algernon: Literary criticism is not your forte, my dear fellow. Don’t try it. You should leave that to people who haven’t been at a university. They do it so well in the daily papers.

  The Importance of Being Earnest

  The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

  The Picture of Dorian Gray

  Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one’s self over poetry is an honour.

  The Picture of Dorian Gray

  There is no literary public in England except newspapers, primers, and encyclopaedias. Of all the people in the world the English have the least sense of the beauty of literature.

  The Picture of Dorian Gray

  We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it.

  “The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating.

  The Picture of Dorian Gray

  There is a great deal to be said in favour of reading a novel backwards. The last page is, as a rule, the most interesting....

  “A Thought-Reader’s Novel”

  We should all be much improved if we started the day with a fine passage of English poetry.

  “A New Calendar”

  A real philanthropist should recognize it as part of his duties to buy every new book of verse that appears.

  “News from Parnassus”

  One should not be too severe on English novels: they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed.

  “Pleasing and Prattling”

  It is pleasanter to have the entree to Balzac’s society than to receive cards from all the duchesses in Mayfair.

  “Balzac in English”

  From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  To the [poet] belongs life in its full and absolute entirely, not merely the beauty that men look at, but the beauty that men listen to also; not merely the momentary grace of form or the transient gladness of colour, but the whole sphere of feeling, the perfect cycle of thought.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with facts under the guise of fiction.

  “The Decay of Lying”

  I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade shuld be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

  The Picture of Dorian Gray

  Mr. Ruskin once described the characters in George Eliot’s novels as being like the sweepings of a Pentonville omnibus....

  “The Decay of Lying”

  We don’t want to be harrowed and disgusted with an account of the doings of the lower orders.

  “The Decay of Lying”

  If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use reading it at all.

  “The Decay of Lying”

  [Modern memoirs] are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering; which, however, is, no doubt, the true explanation of their popularity, as the English public always feels perfectly at its ease when a mediocrity is talking to it.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  As for modern journalism, it is not my business to defend it. It justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  In fact, the popular novel that the public calls healthy is always a thoroughly unhealthy production; and what the public calls an unhealthy novel is always a beautiful and healthy work of art.

  “The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  Gwendolen: I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

  The Importance of Being Earnest

  I quite admit that modern novels have many good points. All I insist on is that, as a class, they are quite unreadable.

  “The Decay of Lying”

  Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty, and wastes upon mean motives and imperceptible “points of view” his neat l
iterary style, his felicitous phrases, his swift and caustic satire.

  “The Decay of Lying”

  Ah! Meredith! Who can define him? His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lighning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language: as a novelist he can do anything except tell a story: as an artist he is everything, except articulate.

  “The Decay of Lying”

  In modern days … the fashion of writing poetry has become far too common, and should, if possible, be discouraged.

  “The Decay of Lying”

  … it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherry-tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any moral tale in the whole of literature.

  “The Decay of Lying”

  Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose.

  “The Decay of Lying”

  Yes, writing has done much harm to writers. We must return to the voice.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  Gilbert: Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  Ernest: But what is the difference between literature and journalism?

  Gilbert: Oh! journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read. That is all.

  “The Critic as Artist”

  BEHAVIOR

  To have been well brought up is a great drawback nowadays. It shuts one out from so much.

  A Woman of No Importance

  Mrs. Erlynne: Don’t use ugly words, Windermere. They are vulgar.

  Lady Windermere’s Fan

  No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime. Vulgarity is the conduct of others.

  “Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young”

  All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime.

  The Picture of Dorian Gray

  There is a fatality about all good resolutions. They are invariably made too soon.

  “Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young”

  In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.

  “Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young”

  To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune … to lose both looks like carelessness.

  The Importance of Being Earnest

  One must be serious about something, if one wants to have any amusement in life.