Quotes
694 lines from Wilde's own works. Every one has been checked against the text, and every one links to the page where he wrote it, so you can read it in context.
The famous ones
"I can resist everything except temptation."
Lord Darlington, Lady Windermere's Fan
"No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
Lord Darlington, Lady Windermere's Fan
"Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes."
Dumby, Lady Windermere's Fan
"What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
Cecil Graham and Lord Darlington, Lady Windermere's Fan
"Because I think that life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it."
Lord Darlington, Lady Windermere's Fan
"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."
Lord Henry Wotton, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."
Lord Henry Wotton, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Youth is the only thing worth having."
Dorian Gray, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them."
"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."
Lord Henry Wotton, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young."
Lord Henry Wotton, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"All art is quite useless."
The Preface, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."
The Preface, The Picture of Dorian Gray
"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance, Phipps."
Lord Goring, An Ideal Husband
"Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear."
Lord Goring, An Ideal Husband
"The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life."
Lord Illingworth, A Woman of No Importance
"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."
Gwendolen, The Importance of Being Earnest
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."
Algernon, The Importance of Being Earnest
"To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness."
Lady Bracknell, The Importance of Being Earnest
"The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means."
Miss Prism, The Importance of Being Earnest
"Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us."
Miss Prism, The Importance of Being Earnest
"In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing."
Gwendolen, The Importance of Being Earnest
"Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word."
The Picture of Dorian Gray
"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."
Lord Henry Wotton
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."
Lord Henry Wotton
"Youth is the only thing worth having."
Dorian Gray
"Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them."
"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."
Lord Henry Wotton
"The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young."
Lord Henry Wotton
"All art is quite useless."
The Preface
"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."
The Preface
"It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."
Lord Henry Wotton
"Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!"
Dorian Gray
"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."
Lord Henry Wotton
"It is the face of my soul."
Dorian Gray
Vera; or, The Nihilists
"Experience, the name men give to their mistakes."
Prince Paul Maraloffski
"Heaven is a despotism. I shall be at home there."
Prince Paul Maraloffski
"Fool, nothing is impossible in Russia but reform."
Michael
"I don't know; there is so much else to do in the world but love."
Vera Sabouroff
"One can live for years sometimes, without living at all, and then all life comes crowding into a single hour."
Alexis
"The love of a people is a king's best body-guard."
Alexis
"I plead not for a king, but for a brother."
Vera Sabouroff
The Duchess of Padua
"We are each our own devil, and we make This world our hell."
Beatrice
"They do not sin at all Who sin for love."
Guido Ferranti
"Men do not know what women do for love."
Beatrice
"Conscience is but the name which cowardice Fleeing from battle scrawls upon its shield."
The Duke
"The only men I fear are silent men."
The Duke
"We are not bound by law, But with it we bind others."
Beatrice
"Love is the sacrament of life"
Guido Ferranti
Lady Windermere's Fan
"I can resist everything except temptation."
Lord Darlington
"No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
Lord Darlington
"Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes."
Dumby
"What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
Cecil Graham and Lord Darlington
"Because I think that life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it."
Lord Darlington
"A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
Lord Darlington
"In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."
Mr Dumby
"Many a woman has a past, but I am told that she has at least a dozen, and that they all fit."
The Duchess of Berwick
"One pays for one's sin, and then one pays again, and all one's life one pays."
Mrs Erlynne
A Woman of No Importance
"The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life."
Lord Illingworth
"the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable."
Lord Illingworth
"One can survive everything nowadays, except death, and live down anything except a good reputation."
Lord Illingworth
"Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them."
Lord Illingworth
"The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."
Lord Illingworth
"Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton. Nothing succeeds like excess."
Lord Illingworth
"Oh! no one. No one in particular. A man of no importance."
Mrs Arbuthnot
"Oh! no one. No one in particular. A woman of no importance."
Lord Illingworth
Salomé
"How beautiful is the Princess Salomé to-night!"
The young Syrian
"Jokanaan, I am amorous of thy body!"
"Only in mirrors should one look, for mirrors do but show us masks."
Herod
"Kings ought never to pledge their word."
Herod
"Well I know that thou wouldst have loved me, and the mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death."
"Kill that woman!"
Herod
"They say that love hath a bitter taste."
An Ideal Husband
"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance, Phipps."
Lord Goring
"Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear."
Lord Goring
"Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike."
Mrs Cheveley
"I love talking about nothing, father. It is the only thing I know anything about."
Lord Goring
"Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are."
Mrs Cheveley
"Even you are not rich enough, Sir Robert, to buy back your past. No man is."
Mrs Cheveley
"An ideal husband! Oh, I don't think I should like that. It sounds like something in the next world."
Mabel Chiltern
"It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love."
Sir Robert Chiltern
The Importance of Being Earnest
"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."
Gwendolen
"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."
Algernon
"To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness."
Lady Bracknell
"The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means."
Miss Prism
"Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us."
Miss Prism
"In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing."
Gwendolen
"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his."
Algernon
"On the contrary, Aunt Augusta, I've now realised for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest."
Jack
A Florentine Tragedy
"How poor a bargain is this life of man, And in how mean a market are we sold!"
Simone
"When we are born our mothers weep, but when We die there is none weeps for us."
Simone
"Let this mean room be as that mighty stage Whereon kings die, and our ignoble lives Become the stakes God plays for."
Simone
"Oh, would that Death might take him where he stands!"
Bianca
"Why Did you not tell me you were so strong?"
Bianca
"Why Did you not tell me you were beautiful?"
Simone
La Sainte Courtisane
The Devoted Friend
"Flour is one thing, and friendship is another, and they should not be confused."
The Miller
"At present you have only the practice of friendship; some day you will have the theory also."
The Miller
"a true friend always says unpleasant things, and does not mind giving pain"
The Miller
"One always suffers for being generous."
The Miller
"Ah! that is always a very dangerous thing to do"
The Duck
"I should expect my devoted friend to be devoted to me, of course."
The Water-rat
The Happy Prince
"He is as beautiful as a weathercock"
A Town Councillor
"I am going to the House of Death. Death is the brother of Sleep, is he not?"
The Swallow
"the living always think that gold can make them happy"
"As he is no longer beautiful he is no longer useful"
The Art Professor
"Bring me the two most precious things in the city"
God
"There is no Mystery so great as Misery."
The Nightingale and the Rose
"Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?"
The Nightingale
"you must build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with your own heart's-blood"
The Rose-tree
"In fact, she is like most artists; she is all style, without any sincerity."
The Student
"everybody knows that jewels cost far more than flowers"
The Professor's daughter
"What a silly thing Love is"
The Student
"Death is a great price to pay for a red rose"
The Nightingale
The Remarkable Rocket
"I am always thinking about myself, and I expect everybody else to do the same. That is what is called sympathy."
"The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated."
"A person who, because he has corns himself, always treads on other people's toes"
The Roman Candle
"It is a very dangerous thing to know one's friends."
"hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do"
"I knew I should create a great sensation"
The Selfish Giant
"My own garden is my own garden"
The Giant
"Spring has forgotten this garden"
The Snow and the Frost
"It is your garden now, little children"
The Giant
"the children are the most beautiful flowers of all"
The Giant
"You let me play once in your garden, today you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise."
The little boy
"How selfish I have been!"
The Giant
The Birthday of the Infanta
"He himself was the monster, and it was at him that all the children had been laughing"
"Indeed he is almost as good as the puppets, only of course not quite so natural."
The Infanta
"It is a pity, for he is so ugly that he might have made the King smile."
The Chamberlain
"Because his heart is broken"
The Chamberlain
"the King of Spain was already wedded to Sorrow, and that though she was but a barren bride he loved her better than Beauty"
"For the future let those who come to play with me have no hearts"
The Infanta
The Fisherman and His Soul
"What men call the shadow of the body is not the shadow of the body, but is the body of the soul."
The young Witch
"Of what use is a man's soul to us? It is not worth a clipped piece of silver."
The merchants
"When thou didst send me forth into the world thou gavest me no heart, so I learned to do all these things and love them."
The Soul
"Once in his life may a man send his Soul away, but he who receiveth back his Soul must keep it with him forever, and this is his punishment and his reward."
The Soul
"Love is better than wisdom, and more precious than riches, and fairer than the feet of the daughters of men."
The young Fisherman
"Of what use is my soul to me? I cannot see it. I may not touch it. I do not know it."
The young Fisherman
The Star-Child
"Injustice has parcelled out the world, nor is there equal division of aught save of sorrow."
One of the Woodcutters
"Into a house where a heart is hard cometh there not always a bitter wind?"
The Woodcutter
"The fly is thy brother. Do it no harm."
The old priest
"Mother, I denied thee in the hour of my pride. Accept me in the hour of my humility."
"Nay, but thou hadst pity on me first"
The Hare
"Thy need is greater than mine."
The Young King
"We have chains, though no eye beholds them; and are slaves, though men call us free."
The weaver
"For how shall the people know that thou art a king, if thou hast not a king's raiment?"
The Chamberlain
"Are not the rich and the poor brothers?"
The young King
"Shall Joy wear what Grief has fashioned?"
The young King
"The burden of this world is too great for one man to bear, and the world's sorrow too heavy for one heart to suffer."
The Bishop
"A greater than I hath crowned thee"
The Bishop
"There is Blood in the heart of the ruby, and Death in the heart of the pearl."
The young King
Lord Arthur Savile's Crime
"The proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding."
Lady Windermere
"My dear Duchess, surely Providence can resist temptation by this time."
Lady Windermere
"If a woman can't make her mistakes charming, she is only a female"
Lady Windermere
"I do not work for money; I live entirely for my art."
Herr Winckelkopf
"Because I owe to it all the happiness of my life"
Lord Arthur Savile
"The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast."
The Canterville Ghost
"I will take the furniture and the ghost at a valuation."
Mr. Otis
"I guess the laws of Nature are not going to be suspended for the British aristocracy."
Mr. Otis
"we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language."
"To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace."
"He made me see what Life is, and what Death signifies, and why Love is stronger than both."
Virginia Otis
"Love is stronger than Death is."
The Model Millionaire
"It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating."
"Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow."
"there are moments when Art almost attains to the dignity of manual labour."
Alan Trevor
"An artist's heart is his head"
Alan Trevor
"our business is to realise the world as we see it, not to reform it as we know it."
Alan Trevor
"Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed."
The Sphinx Without a Secret
The Portrait of Mr. W. H.
"It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal."
Erskine
"All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction."
Erskine
"The only apostle who did not deserve proof was St. Thomas, and St. Thomas was the only apostle who got it."
Cyril Graham
"To die for one's theological beliefs is the worst use a man can make of his life, but to die for a literary theory!"
"Perhaps, by finding perfect expression for a passion, I had exhausted the passion itself."
"a thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."
Erskine
The Portrait of Mr. W. H. (Expanded Version)
"You forget that a thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."
Erskine
"Every disciple takes away something from his master."
"No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true."
"It is Art, and Art only, that reveals us to ourselves."
The Sphinx
"A beautiful and silent Sphinx has watched me through the shifting gloom."
The speaker
"Lift up your large black satin eyes which are like cushions where one sinks!"
The speaker
"Only one God has ever died."
The speaker
"You wake in me each bestial sense, you make me what I would not be."
The speaker
"And weeps for every soul that dies, and weeps for every soul in vain."
The speaker
"Come forth you exquisite grotesque! half woman and half animal!"
The speaker
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
"Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word."
"Upon that little tent of blue"
The speaker
"The man had killed the thing he loved"
The speaker
"The coward does it with a kiss"
The speaker
"Something was dead in each of us"
The speaker
"And all men kill the thing they love"
The speaker
"Yet each man kills the thing he loves"
The speaker
A Fragment from the Agamemnon of Aeschylos
A Vision
Amor Intellectualis
Apologia
"Trodden the dusty road of common sense,"
The speaker
"But surely it is something to have been"
The speaker
"The best belovèd for a little while,"
The speaker
"The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars!"
The speaker
At Verona
Athanasia
Ave Imperatrix
Ave Maria Gratia Plena
Ballade de Marguerite
"A Forester's son may not eat off gold."
The mother
"Elle est morte, la Marguerite."
A boy's song
"And let the dead folk bury their dead."
The mother
"O mother, hath one grave room for two?"
The son
By the Arno
Canzonet
Chanson
Charmides
Chorus of Cloud Maidens
"And the sun in the sky never wearies of spreading his radiance around."
The Cloud Maidens
"And the crash of loud lyres."
The Cloud Maidens
"To the peaks of the pine-covered mountains where the pines hang as tresses of hair."
The Cloud Maidens
Désespoir
E Tenebris
Easter Day
Endymion
Fabien Dei Franchi
"These things are well enough"
The speaker
"The murdered brother rising through the floor,"
The speaker
"Thou trumpet set for Shakespeare's lips to blow!"
The speaker
Flower of Love
From Spring Days to Winter
Hélas!
Her Voice
"Love's web is spun."
The woman
"We have lived our lives in a land of dreams!"
The woman
"I have my beauty, you your Art,"
The woman
"One world was not enough for two"
The woman
Humanitad
Impression de Voyage
"The sea was sapphire coloured, and the sky"
The speaker
"The ripple of girls' laughter at the stern,"
The speaker
"I stood upon the soil of Greece at last!"
The speaker
Impression du Matin
Impression: Le Réveillon
In the Forest
In the Gold Room
Italia
La Bella Donna Della Mia Mente
La Fuite de la Lune
La Mer
Le Jardin
Le Jardin des Tuileries
Le Panneau
Les Ballons
Les Silhouettes
Libertatis Sacra Fames
Lotus Leaves
Louis Napoleon
Madonna Mia
Magdalen Walks
My Voice
"Within this restless, hurried, modern world"
The speaker
"That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell."
The speaker
"And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed."
The speaker
On the Sale by Auction of Keats' Love Letters
Pan
Panthea
Phèdre
The Artist
The Disciple
The Doer of Good
"But I was a leper once, and you healed me. How else should I live?"
The young man at the feast
"But you forgave me my sins, and the way is a pleasant way."
The painted woman
"But I was dead once, and you raised me from the dead. What else should I do but weep?"
The weeping young man
"What else should I do but weep?"
The weeping young man
The House of Judgment
The Master
The Teacher of Wisdom
Quantum Mutata
Quia Multum Amavi
"Ah! hadst thou liked me less and loved me more,"
The speaker
"I am most glad I loved thee"
The speaker
"The suns that go to make one speedwell blue!"
The speaker
Ravenna
Requiescat
Rome Unvisited
Roses and Rue
San Miniato
Santa Decca
Sen Artysty
Serenade
"My Tyrian galley waits for thee."
The lover
"O Lady mine come down, come down!"
The lover
"O noble pilot, steer for Troy,"
The lover
Silentium Amoris
"So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail,"
The speaker
"Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung."
The speaker
"And for excess of Love my Love is dumb."
The speaker
Sonnet on Approaching Italy
Sonnet: On Hearing the Dies Irae Sung in the Sistine Chapel
Sonnet: On the Massacre of the Christians in Bulgaria
Sonnet to Liberty
Sonnet: Written in Holy Week at Genoa
Symphony in Yellow
Taedium Vitae
"This paltry age's gaudy livery,"
The speaker
"I love it not! these things are less to me"
The speaker
"Where my white soul first kissed the mouth of sin."
The speaker
The Burden of Itys
The Dole of the King's Daughter
The Garden of Eros
The Grave of Keats
The Grave of Shelley
The Harlot's House
The New Helen
The New Remorse
The Theatre at Argos
The True Knowledge
Theocritus
Theoretikos
Θρηνῳδία
"Tall Troy is down."
The captive women of Troy
"Europa is Mistress and Queen."
The captive women of Troy
"To death as my Lover and Lord."
The captive women of Troy
"O fair wind blowing from the sea!"
The captive women of Troy
To Milton
To My Wife
A Lament
Under the Balcony
Urbs Sacra Aeterna
Vita Nuova
Wasted Days
With a Copy of A House of Pomegranates
Portia
"Was half so fair as thou whom I behold."
The speaker
"I think I will not quarrel with the Bond."
The speaker
"O Portia! take my heart: it is thy due:"
The speaker
Queen Henrietta Maria
"O Hair of Gold! O Crimson Lips! O Face"
The speaker
"Like some wan lily overdrenched with rain:"
The speaker
"My freedom, and my life republican!"
The speaker
Camma
The Grosvenor Gallery, 1877
"Although these three painters differ much in aim and in result, they yet are one in their faith, and love, and reverence, the three golden keys to the gate of the House Beautiful."
"These pictures are certainly worth looking at for about as long as one looks at a real rocket, that is, for somewhat less than a quarter of a minute."
"Were this Mr. Burne-Jones's only work it would be enough of itself to make him rank as a great painter."
"Taking a general view of the works exhibited here, we see that this dull land of England, with its short summer, its dreary rains and fogs, its mining districts and factories, and vile deification of machinery, has yet produced very great masters of art, men with a subtle sense and love of what is beautiful, original, and noble in imagination."
"Burne-Jones, on the contrary, is a dreamer in the land of mythology, a seer of fairy visions, a symbolical painter."
The Tomb of Keats
The Grosvenor Gallery, 1879
"Mr. Whistler, whose wonderful and eccentric genius is better appreciated in France than in England, sends a very wonderful picture entitled The Golden Girl"
"It would be quite impossible, however, to give any adequate account or criticism of the work now exhibited in the Grosvenor Gallery within the limits of a single notice."
"The last-named artist, while essentially weak in draughtsmanship, yet possesses the higher quality of noble colour in the fullest degree."
"This is the picture; as truthful and lovely as any of those Brignoli children which Vandyke has painted in Genoa."
The Rise of Historical Criticism
"Free criticism is as unknown as free trade."
"Herodotus wrote to illustrate the wonderful ways of Providence and the nemesis that falls on sin, and his work is a good example of the truth that nothing can dispense with criticism so much as a moral aim."
"Herodotus would have believed in Scipio's dream. Thucydides would have ignored it entirely. Polybius explains it."
"Polybius was one of those many men who are born too late to be original."
"Greek philosophy began and ended in scepticism: the first and the last word of Greek history was Faith."
"The only spirit which is entirely removed from us is the mediæval; the Greek spirit is essentially modern."
"It is so hard to use facts, so easy to accumulate them."
Art and the Handicraftsman
"Let us have no machine-made ornament at all; it is all bad and worthless and ugly."
"I have never watched a man do anything useful who has not been graceful at some moment of his labour: it is only the loafer and the idle saunterer who is as useless and uninteresting to the artist as he is to himself."
"Let the Greek carve his lions and the Goth his dragons: buffalo and wild deer are the animals for you."
"I said there should be a law, but there is really no necessity for a new law: nothing could be easier than to bring the ordinary critic under the head of the criminal classes."
"Congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age."
"And lastly, let us remember that art is the one thing which Death cannot harm."
"People often talk as if there was an opposition between what is beautiful and what is useful."
House Decoration
"To see the frock-coat of the drawing-room done in bronze, or the double waistcoat perpetuated in marble, adds a new horror to death."
"They wore only what was comfortable, and therefore beautiful."
"You have too many white walls."
"I think I have deserved something nicer."
"Nothing is so ignoble that Art cannot sanctify it."
"Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all."
L'Envoi
"Nor, in looking at a work of art, should we be dreaming of what it symbolises, but rather loving it for what it is."
"Their pathetic intentions are of no value to us, but their realised creations only."
"Whatever work we have in the nineteenth century must rest on the two poles of personality and perfection."
"one's real life is so often the life that one does not lead"
"It is a beautifully coloured surface, nothing more"
"But to us the rule of art is not the rule of morals."
Letters to the Press
"It is a great advantage, I admit, to have done nothing, but one must not abuse even that advantage."
"To be great is to be misunderstood."
"A thing in Nature becomes much lovelier if it reminds us of a thing in Art, but a thing in Art gains no real beauty through reminding us of a thing in Nature."
"Common sense is the enemy of romance."
"Only mediocrities progress."
"The flower is a work of art. The book is not."
Mrs. Langtry as Hester Grazebrook
"it is only countries which possess great beauty that can appreciate beauty at all."
"for if we desire realistic acting we cannot have realistic scene-painting."
"Whistler very wisely always paints those things which are within reach of Velasquez only."
"but then it is only the impossible things that are worth doing nowadays!"
"And then motion comes, and the statue wakes into life."
The English Renaissance of Art
"For to disagree with three-fourths of the British public on all points is one of the first elements of sanity, one of the deepest consolations in all moments of spiritual doubt."
"For beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm."
"For the good we get from art is not what we learn from it; it is what we become through it."
"For he who does not love art in all things does not love it at all, and he who does not need art in all things does not need it at all."
"We spend our days, each one of us, in looking for the secret of life. Well, the secret of life is in art."
"Love art for its own sake, and then all things that you need will be added to you."
Impressions of America
"There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America."
"They afterwards took me to a dancing saloon where I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across."
"The prairie reminded me of a piece of blotting-paper."
"The Americans are the best politically educated people in the world."
"America is the noisiest country that ever existed."
Lecture to Art Students
"Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong."
"The artist has always been, and will always be, an exquisite exception."
"To paint what you see is a good rule in art, but to see what is worth painting is better."
"Decorative art emphasises its material: imaginative art annihilates it."
"A picture has no meaning but its beauty, no message but its joy."
"There is no golden age of art; only artists who have produced what is more golden than gold."
More Radical Ideas upon Dress Reform
"The gamin in the gutter may be a necessity, but the gamin in discussion is a nuisance."
"My young man is consequently apparelled with ideas, while Mr. Huyshe's young man is stiffened with facts; the latter teaches one nothing; from the former one learns everything."
"There is a divine economy about beauty; it gives us just what is needful and no more, whereas ugliness is always extravagant"
"Now, whatever is useful cannot be an anachronism."
"Every right article of apparel belongs equally to both sexes, and there is absolutely no such thing as a definitely feminine garment."
"The word practical is nearly always the last refuge of the uncivilised."
Woman's Dress
"It is from the shoulders, and from the shoulders only, that all garments should be hung."
"I regard these things as mere wicked superfluities, tragic proofs that the divided skirt is ashamed of its own division."
"I am not proposing any antiquarian revival of an ancient costume, but trying merely to point out the right laws of dress, laws which are dictated by art and not by archæology, by science and not by fashion"
"A clog might be a dream of beauty, and, if not too high or too heavy, most comfortable also."
Mr. Whistler's Ten O'Clock
"He stood there, a miniature Mephistopheles, mocking the majority!"
"An artist is not an isolated fact; he is the resultant of a certain milieu and a certain entourage, and can no more be born of a nation that is devoid of any sense of beauty than a fig can grow from a thorn or a rose blossom from a thistle."
"For that he is indeed one of the very greatest masters of painting is my opinion. And I may add that in this opinion Mr. Whistler himself entirely concurs."
"I say that only an artist is a judge of art; there is a wide difference."
Reviews
"It is clear that art has at last reached the criminal classes."
"A steady course of Balzac reduces our living friends to shadows, and our acquaintances to the shadows of shades."
"As a writer he has mastered everything, except language; as a novelist he can do everything, except tell a story; as an artist he is everything, except articulate."
"It has been said of him, and with truth, that he is a master of language, but with still greater truth it may be said that Language is his master."
"He has nothing to say and says it."
"It is only about things that do not interest one, that one can give a really unbiassed opinion; and this is no doubt the reason why an unbiassed opinion is always valueless."
"A poet can survive everything but a misprint."
The Relation of Dress to Art
"I have always been of opinion that consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative"
"The basis of Art is not the Fancy Ball."
"It is what one looks at, not what one listens to, that makes the artist."
"A nation arrayed in stove-pipe hats and dress-improvers might have built the Pantechnichon possibly, but the Parthenon never."
"For the arts are made for life, and not life for the arts."
The Truth of Masks
"A Truth in art is that whose contradictory is also true."
"Not that I agree with everything that I have said in this essay."
"We look to the archæologist for the materials, to the artist for the method."
"Better to take pleasure in a rose than to put its root under a microscope."
"Costumes, of course, they are to the designer; but dresses they should be to those that wear them."
"Besides until an actor is at home in his dress, he is not at home in his part."
"The truths of metaphysics are the truths of masks."
Keats's Sonnet on Blue
"In the case of poetry, as in the case of the other arts, what may appear to be simply technicalities of method are in their essence spiritual, not mechanical"
"The preference that precedes perfection, the evolution of the beauty, and the mere making of the music, have, if not their artistic value, at least their value to the artist."
"Having got his line right in his first draft, Keats probably did not spoil it in his second."
"The workings of that spirit of selection which is the secret of style"
Art at Willis's Rooms
"Everybody, however, was extremely pleased to learn that it is no longer the duty of art to hold the mirror up to nature"
"one young gentleman declared that such virtuous modesty as the lecturer's might easily become a most vicious mannerism"
"though 'sweet reasonableness' may not convert, it always charms."
"Art, in a word, must not content itself simply with holding the mirror up to nature, for it is a re-creation more than a reflection, and not a repetition but rather a new song."
Sermons in Stones at Bloomsbury
"Common tombstones they are, most of them, the work not of famous artists but of simple handicraftsmen, only they were wrought in days when every handicraft was an art."
"Indeed, as we view these marbles it is not difficult to see whence the Renaissance sprang and to what we owe the various forms of Renaissance art."
"Economy is an excellent public virtue, but the parsimony that allows valuable works of art to remain in the grime and gloom of a damp cellar is little short of a detestable public vice."
"The pathos of parting from those we love is the central motive of Greek funeral art."
The American Invasion
"Though one can dine in New York one could not dwell there."
"Warned by the example of her mother that American women do not grow old gracefully, she tries not to grow old at all and often succeeds."
"She has exquisite feet and hands, is always bien chaussée et bien gantée and can talk brilliantly upon any subject, provided that she knows nothing about it."
"In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience."
The Unity of the Arts
"The true unity of the arts is to be found, not in any resemblance of one art to another, but in the fact that to the really artistic nature all the arts have the same message and speak the same language though with different tongues."
"No amount of daubing on a cellar wall will make a man understand the mystery of Michael Angelo's Sybils, nor is it necessary to write a blank verse drama before one can appreciate the beauty of Hamlet."
"if from the incompetent critic all things be hidden, to the bad painter nothing shall be revealed"
"every mood has its colour and every dream has its form"
English Poetesses
"In her very rejection of art she was an artist."
"We have a few rose-leaves out of her garden, that is all."
"In our eagerness to find a new voice and a fresh mode of music, we have forgotten how beautiful Echo may be."
"Poetry is for our highest moods, when we wish to be with the gods, and in our poetry nothing but the very best should satisfy us; but prose is for our daily bread, and the lack of good prose is one of the chief blots on our culture."
"Old fashions in literature are not so pleasant as old fashions in dress."
"She refused to sandpaper her muse."
Mr. Morris on Tapestry
"What is the use of setting an artist in a twelve-acre field and telling him to design a house?"
"The one was not too free, the other was not a slave."
"Commercialism, with its vile god cheapness, its callous indifference to the worker, its innate vulgarity of temper, is our enemy."
"But, said Mr. Morris in conclusion, to have great work we must be worthy of it."
Printing and Printers
"No ornament or illustration should be used in a book which cannot be printed in the same way as the type."
"The type used by the Pall Mall was, we are glad to say, rightly approved of."
"Mr. Walker has the keen artistic instinct that comes out of actually working in the art of which he spoke."
"Latin, he remarked, was a better language to print than English, as the tails of the letters did not so often fall below the line."
Sculpture at the Arts and Crafts
The Beauties of Bookbinding
"'The apron is the banner of the future!' exclaimed the lecturer, and he took his coat off and put his apron on."
"These handicrafts are not primarily expressive arts; they are impressive arts."
"Hence it comes that good decoration is always traditional."
"Between the arts that aim at annihilating their material and the arts that aim at glorifying it there is a wide gulf."
The Close of the Arts and Crafts
"Much bad art comes from one art trying to borrow from another."
"And yet machines are bad only when they are our masters."
"For a new age we require a new form."
"Next year somebody must lecture the Arts and Crafts on Japanese art."
"The printing press is a machine that Art values because it obeys her."
London Models
"Though none of them can talk Greek, many can look Greek, which to a nineteenth-century painter is naturally of great importance."
"For an artist to marry his model is as fatal as for a gourmet to marry his cook: the one gets no sittings, and the other gets no dinners."
"A good circus is an oasis of Hellenism in a world that reads too much to be wise, and thinks too much to be beautiful."
"Model-painting, in a word, while it may be the condition of art, is not by any means its aim."
"The robe may be the robe of Athens, but the face is usually the face of Brompton."
"The clown may be blatant, but the acrobat is always beautiful."
Pen, Pencil and Poison
"The fact of a man being a poisoner is nothing against his prose."
"There is no essential incongruity between crime and culture."
"All beautiful things belong to the same age."
"Sin should be solitary, and have no accomplices."
"To be suggestive for fiction is to be of more importance than a fact."
"Yes; it was a dreadful thing to do, but she had very thick ankles."
Thomas Griffiths Wainewright
"A mask tells us more than a face."
The Decay of Lying
"Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life."
Vivian
"She is a veil, rather than a mirror."
Vivian
"Where the cultured catch an effect, the uncultured catch cold."
Vivian
"Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable."
Vivian
"You have proved it to my dissatisfaction, which is better."
Cyril
"The final revelation is that Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art."
Vivian
"Art never expresses anything but itself."
Vivian
Letters on Dorian Gray
"Good people exasperate one's reason; bad people stir one's imagination."
"The function of the artist is to invent, not to chronicle."
"You say that a work of art is a form of action. It is not. It is the highest mode of thought."
"Each man sees his own sin in Dorian Gray. What Dorian Gray's sins are no one knows. He who finds them has brought them."
"The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic."
"It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors."
The Critic as Artist
"Oh! journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read."
Gilbert
"The one duty we owe to history is to re-write it."
Gilbert
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."
Gilbert
"All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling."
Gilbert
"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all."
Gilbert
"For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."
Gilbert
"There is no sin except stupidity."
Gilbert
The Soul of Man under Socialism
"To live is the rarest thing in the world."
"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue."
"A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing."
"Art is the most intense mode of Individualism that the world has known."
"The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes."
"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."
"Progress is the realisation of Utopias."
Puppets and Actors
Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young
"The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered."
"Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others."
"In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential. In all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential."
"One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art."
"The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything."
"To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance."
Letters to the Daily Chronicle
"Ordinary cruelty is simply stupidity."
"Authority is as destructive to those who exercise it as it is to those on whom it is exercised."
"The doctor is fighting for a theory. The man is fighting for his life."
"One of the tragedies of prison life is that it turns a man's heart to stone."
"To be exhibited, like an ape in a cage, to people who are fond of one, and of whom one is fond, is a needless and horrible degradation."
"It is not the prisoners who need reformation. It is the prisons."
De Profundis
"The supreme vice is shallowness."
"I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age."
"To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development."
"Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask."
"Most people are other people."
"Pleasure for the beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul."
"Where there is sorrow there is holy ground."