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Artist Quotes by Oscar Wilde

231 Artist quotes by Oscar Wilde

All Artist quotes Oscar Wilde’s page

Oscar Wilde writes that the artist’s job is to invent, not just record. He describes art as both surface and hidden symbol, warning that digging too deep can be risky. He also says art, like nature, has its own monsters and can shield us from the harsh realities of life.

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All art is at once surface and symbol.

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“artists have sex but art has none”

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“Life is short, art is infinite.”

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“The is nothing that art cannot express”

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Art, like Nature, has her monsters

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Art persists, it timelessly continues.

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Art only begins where Imitation ends.

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To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim

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“We should remember that all the arts are fine arts and all the arts decorative arts.”

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“Art is rarely intelligible to the criminal classes.”

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Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

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When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.

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

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I treated Art as the supreme reality and life as a mere mode of fiction.

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If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart.

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Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.

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For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to…

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It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.

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As for borrowing Mr. Whistler's ideas about art, the only thoroughly original ideas I have heard him express have had reference to…

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“was no stain left upon it. It was bright, and glistened. As it had killed the painter, so it would kill the…

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“Love is a more wonderful thing than art.' 'They are both simply forms of imitation,' remarked Lord Henry.”

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“Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls…

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Every single work of art is the fulfillment of a prophecy; for every work of art is the conversion of an idea…

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The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.

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“In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal…

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“Cyril: surely you would acknowledge that art expresses the temper of its age, the spirit of its time, the moral and social…

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The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal.…

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It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist's life is that he cannot realise his ideal. But the true tragedy…

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“Nothing really at any period of my life was ever of the smallest importance to me compared with Art. But in the…

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The mere mechanical technique of acting can be taught, but the spirit that is to give life to lifeless forms must be…

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

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every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the…

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“Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises…

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The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please…

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“The political independence of a nation must not be confused with any intellectual isolation. The spiritual freedom, indeed, your own generous lives…

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Perhaps there may come into my art also, no less than into my life, a still deeper note, one of greater unity…

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“For the good we get from art is not what we learn from it; it is what we become through it. Its…

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In his very rejection of art Walt Whitman is an artist. He tried to produce a certain effect by certain means and…

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Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to…

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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…

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More by Oscar Wilde

How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?

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

Bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others

Who, being loved, is poor?

“Basil my dear boy puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life…

Anybody can be good in the country

I don't at all like knowing what people say of me behind my back. It makes me far too conceited.

“Alles Populäre ist falsch.”

“If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find that we are…

To love one's self is the beginning of a life-long romance

“Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.”

Men always want to be a womans first love. Women have a more subtle instinct: What they like is to be a mans last…

Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a feast.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a…