“Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
“The public is largely influenced by the look of a book. So are we all. It is the only artistic thing about… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
Life is the art of being well deceived, and to succeed, it must be habitual and uninterrupted. — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
“Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
The longer I live, Dorian, the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
“If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
In fact, the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.... The Japanese… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
“But I think it will bring you something besides this, something that is the knowledge of real strength in art: not that… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
“I can not help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
“Pre-Raphaelites they called themselves; not that they imitated the early Italian masters at all, but that in their work, as opposed to… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
We spend our days, each one of us, in looking for the secret of life. Well, the secret of life is in… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong. — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
That beauty which is meant by art is no mere accident of human life which people can take or leave, but a… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
“do they not tell us more of the real spirit of the Italian Renaissance, of the dream of Savonarola and of the… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
“Art never expresses anything but itself. It has an independent life, just as thought has, and develops purely on its own lines… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
Life! Life! Don't let us go to life for our fulfillment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
For an artist to marry his model is as fatal as for a gourmet to marry his cook: the one gets no… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
That is the mission of art - to make us pause and look at a thing a second time. — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
The English public takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral. — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame. — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
Bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
“Basil my dear boy puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
I don't at all like knowing what people say of me behind my back. It makes me far too conceited. — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
“If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find that we are… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
“Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.” — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
Men always want to be a womans first love. Women have a more subtle instinct: What they like is to be a mans last… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
