The Wit and Wisdom of Oscar Wilde Read online

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 1

  Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious, and their method too clearly defined. One exhausts what they have to say in a very short time, and they become as tedious as one’s relations.

  —Gilbert, “The Critic as Artist,” Part 2

  The more the public is interested in artists, the less it is interested in art. The personality of the artist is not a thing the public should know anything about. It is too accidental.

  —“Mr. Oscar Wilde on Mr. Oscar Wilde: An Interview”

  “The journalist is always reminding the public of the existence of the artist. That is unnecessary of him. He is always reminding the artist of the existence of the public. That is indecent of him.”

  —Wilde, as quoted in conversation [AAT]

  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 …

  —Letter [June 25, 1890]

  “Nothing is worth painting but what is not worth looking at.”

  —Wilde, as quoted in conversation [OW]

  “The only artists I have ever known, who are personally delightful, are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.”

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 4

  … there is nothing of which the ordinary English painter more needs to be reminded than that the true artist does not wait for life to be made picturesque for him, but sees life under picturesque conditions always—under conditions … which are at once new and delightful.

  —“The Relation of Dress to Art:

  A Note in Black and White on Mr. Whistler’s Lecture”

  To paint what you see is a good rule in art, but to see what is worth painting is better.

  —“Lecture to Art Students”

  It is a sad fact, but there is no doubt that the poor are completely unconscious of their own picturesqueness.

  —“London Models”

  Only mediocrities progress. An artist revolves in a cycle of masterpieces, the first of which is no less perfect than the last.

  —Letter [September 22, 1894]

  Make some sacrifice for your art, and you will be repaid; but ask of Art to sacrifice herself for you, and a bitter disappointment may come to you.

  —Letter [c. 1885]

  … mere expression is to an artist the supreme and only mode of life. … On the other side of the prison-wall there are some poor black soot-smirched trees that are just breaking out into buds of an almost shrill green. I know quite well what they are going through. They are finding expression.

  —Letter from prison [April 1, 1897]

  All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.

  —Gilbert, The Critic as Artist, Part 2

  “The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse.”

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 1

  We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

  —The Picture of Dorian Gray, Preface

  What Art really reveals to us is Nature’s lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition.

  —“The Decay of Lying”

  … Art should never try to be popular; the public should try to make itself artistic.

  —“The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything.

  —“The Decay of Lying”

  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”

  … the chief thing that makes life a failure from an artistic point of view is the thing that lends to life its sordid security, the fact that one can never repeat exactly the same emotion. How different it is in the world of art! On a shelf of a bookcase behind you stands the Divine Comedy, and I know that, if I open it at a certain place, I shall be filled with a fierce hatred of someone who has never wronged me, or stirred by a great love for someone whom I shall never see. There is no mood or passion that art cannot give us, and those of us who have discovered her secret can settle beforehand what our experiences are going to be. We can choose our day and select our hour.

  —Gilbert, The Critic as Artist, Part 2

  … Nature is always behind the age. It takes a great artist to be thoroughly modern.

  —“A Note on Some Modern Poets”

  All artistic creation is absolutely subjective. The very landscape that Corot looked at was, as he said himself, but a mood of his own mind; and those great figures of Greek or English drama that seem to us to possess an actual existence of their own, apart from the poets who shaped and fashioned them, are, in their ultimate analysis, simply the poets themselves, not as they thought they were, but as they thought they were not; and by such thinking came in strange manner, though but for a moment, really so to be. For out of ourselves we can never pass, nor can there be in creation what in the creator was not.

  —Gilbert, The Critic as Artist, Part 2

  … art is very life itself and knows nothing of death; she is absolute truth and takes no care of fact; she sees … that Achilles is even now more actual and real than Wellington, not merely more noble and interesting as a type and figure but more positive and real.

  —“The English Renaissance of Art”

  To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of arts and culture.

  —Gilbert, The Critic as Artist, Part 1

  The artist is indeed the child of his own age, but the present will not be to him a whit more real than the past …

  —“The English Renaissance of Art”

  … a life of definite and studied materialism, and philosophy of appetite and cynicism, and a cult of sensual and senseless ease, are bad things for an artist: they narrow the imagination, and dull the more delicate sensibilities.

  —Letter [June 9, 1897]

  “Everything is of use to an artist except an idea.”

  —Wilde, as quoted in conversation [AAT]

  “There is something fatal about a portrait. It has a life of its own.”

  —Dorian Gray, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 9

  We spend our days, each one of us, in looking for the secret of life. Well, the secret of life is in art.

  —“The English Renaissance of Art”

  … when a thing is useless it should be made beautiful, otherwise it has no reason for existing at all.

  —Letter [February 2, 1891]

  A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it.

  —Letter [c. April 1891]

  I do not say that poet and painter may not treat of the same subject. They have always done so, and will always do so. But while the poet can be pictorial or not, as he chooses, the painter must be pictorial always. For a painter is limited, not to what he sees in nature, but to what upon canvas may be seen.

  —Gilbert, The Critic as Artist, Part 1

  Movement, that problem of the visible arts, can be truly realized by literature alone. It is literature that shows us the body in its swiftness and the soul in its unrest.

  —Gilbert, The Critic as Ar
tist, Part 1

  There are two ways of disliking art, Ernest. One is to dislike it. The other, to like it rationally.

  —Gilbert, The Critic as Artist, Part 2

  It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.

  —Gilbert, The Critic as Artist, Part 2

  Aesthetics are higher than ethics. They belong to a more spiritual sphere. To discern the beauty of a thing is the finest point to which we can arrive.

  —Gilbert, The Critic as Artist, Part 2

  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.

  —Letter [c. early December 1891]

  A mirror will give back to one one’s own sorrow. But Art is not a mirror, but a crystal.

  —Letter from prison [December 16, 1896]

  The one thing that the public dislikes is novelty. Any attempt to extend the subject-matter of art is extremely distasteful to the public; and yet the vitality and progress of art depend in a large measure on the continual extension of subject-matter.

  —“The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  What is the use of telling artists that they should try and paint Nature as she really is? What Nature really is, is a question for metaphysics, not for art. Art deals with appearances, and the eye of the man who looks at Nature, the vision in fact of the artist, is far more important to us than what he looks at.

  —“The New President”

  In Art, the public accept what has been, because they cannot alter it, not because they appreciate it.

  —“The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art. The spectator is to be receptive. He is to be the violin on which the master is to play.

  —“The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  … there are not many arts, but one art merely; poem, picture, and Parthenon, sonnet and statue—all are in their essence the same, and he who knows one, knows all.

  —“Mr. Whistler’s Ten O’Clock”

  … Puritanism is never so offensive and destructive as when it deals with art matters.

  —Letter [June 27, 1890]

  You say that a work of art is a form of action. It is not. It is the highest mode of thought.

  —Letter [June 28, 1890]

  It is proper that limitations should be placed on action. It is not proper that limitations should be placed on art. To art belong all things that are and all things that are not.

  —Letter [June 27, 1890]

  The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself.

  —“The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then, and then only, does it come into existence.

  —“The Decay of Lying”

  … in art there is no such thing as a universal truth. A Truth in art is that whose contradictory is also true.

  —“Pen, Pencil and Poison”

  Poetry has many modes of music; she does not blow through one pipe alone. Directness of utterance is good, but so is the subtle recasting of thought into a new and delightful form. Simplicity is good, but complexity, mystery, strangeness, symbolism, obscurity even, these have their value. Indeed, properly speaking, there is no such thing as Style; there are merely styles, that is all.

  —“A Note on Some Modern Poets”

  No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.

  —Wilde testifying in court [ TOW]

  All archeological 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 pictures that do not immediately give you such artistic joy as to make you say, “How beautiful,” are bad pictures.

  —“Lecture to Art Students”

  Chapter 5

  THE AGES

  “As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.”

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 4

  To win back my youth, Gerald, there is nothing I wouldn’t do—except take exercise, get up early, or be a useful member of the community.

  —Lord Illingworth, A Woman of No Importance, Act 3

  “The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.”

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 19

  “To get back one’s youth, one has merely to repeat one’s follies.”

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 3

  Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

  —Lady Bracknell, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 3

  The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything.

  —“Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young”

  … old-fashioned people … did not realize that we live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities …

  —The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 8

  The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.

  —Gwendolen, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 1

  The youth of today are quite monstrous. They have absolutely no respect for dyed hair.

  —Dumby, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Act 3

  Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of physical weakness in the old.

  —Lady Bracknell, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 3

  One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.

  —Lord Illingworth, A Woman of No Importance, Act 1

  Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely if ever, do they forgive them.

  —Lord Illingworth, A Woman of No Importance, Act 2

  LORD ILLINGWORTH: I never intend to grow old. The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life.

  MRS. ALLONBY:And the body is born young and grows old. That is life’s tragedy.

  —A Woman of No Importance, Act 1

  I delight in men over seventy. They always offer one the devotion of a lifetime. I think seventy an ideal age for a man.

  —Mrs. Allonby, A Woman of No Importance, Act 4

  … I don’t think as a rule that people ever mind much what advice friends of the same age give them. After all, for effect and persuasion there is nothing like wrinkles and either grey hair or baldness.

  —Letter [December 30, 1876]

  … my experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don’t know anything at all.

  —Cecil Graham, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Act 2

  “This day happens to be my birthday, and I am mourning (as I shall henceforth do on each of my anniversaries) the flight of one year of my youth into nothingness, the growing blight upon my summer.”

  —Wilde, as quoted in conversation, at age 37 [OW]

  … I should fancy Mrs. Cheveley is one of those very modern women of our time who find a new scandal as becoming as a new bonnet, and air them both in the Park every afternoon at five-thirty. I am sure she adores scandals, and that the sorrow of her life at present is that she can’t manage to have enough of them.

  —Lord Goring, An Ideal Husband, Act 2

  Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern. One is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly.

  —Lady Markby, An Ideal Husband, Act 2

  Ordinary critics always think that children are sentimental about literature: they are not: they have humour instead. Later on it life, humour goes, but laughter is the primaeval attitude towards life—a mode of approach that survives only in artists and cri
minals.

  —Letter [December 3, 1898]

  Politics are my only pleasure. You see nowadays it is not fashionable to flirt till one is forty, or to be romantic till one is forty-five, so we poor women who are under thirty, or say we are, have nothing open to us but politics or philanthropy. And philanthropy seems to me to have become simply the refuge of people who wish to annoy their fellow-creatures. I prefer politics. I think they are more … becoming!

  —Mrs. Cheveley, An Ideal Husband, Act 1

  MRS. CHEVELEY: Fathers have so much to learn from their sons nowadays.

  LADY MARKBY: Really, dear? What?

  MRS. CHEVELEY: The art of living. The only really Fine Art we have produced in modern times.

  —An Ideal Husband, A ct 2

  “The longer I live … the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us.”