Quotes from Oscar Wilde

The gods bestowed on Max [Beerbohm] the gift of perpetual old age.

M. Zola is determined to show that, if he has not got genius, he can at least be dull.

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.

Art, like Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous voices.

Music is the perfect type of art.

It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.

Art should never be popular.

For what is truth? In matters of religion, it is simply the opinion that has survived. In matters of science, it is the ultimate sensation. In matters of art, it is one's last mood.

When bankers get together for dinner, they discuss Art. When artists get together for dinner, they discuss Money

Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself.She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance.

A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public are to him non-existent

Good artists exist simply in what they make and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

One must have some sort of occupation nowadays. If I hadn't my debts I shouldn't have anything to think about.

To toil for a hard master is bitter, but to have no master to toil for is more bitter still.

Hard work is amply the refuge of those who have nothing to do.

The best work in literature is always done by those who do not depend on it for their daily bread and the highest form of literature, Poetry, brings no wealth to the singer.

In England it is enough for a man to try and produce any serious, beautiful work to lose all his rights as a citizen.

There is something tragic about the enormous number of young men there are in England at the present moment who start life with perfect profiles, and end by adopting some useful profession.

The evil that machinery is doing is not merely in the consequence of its work but in the fact that it makes men themselves machines also.

The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.

I have found that all ugly things are made by those who strive to make something beautiful, and that all beautiful things are made by those who strive to make something useful.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm.

But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins.