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 bewildered 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.