Wilde, verified
"People often talk as if there was an opposition between what is beautiful and what is useful."
More from Art and the Handicraftsman
Every quote →"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."