/>“The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and
conceal the artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can translate into another
manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The
highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who
find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This
is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things
are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom
beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral
or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
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The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing
his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of
romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral
life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of
art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

No artist
desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist
has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable
mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.


Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice
and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. From the point of view of
form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of
view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the type. All art is at once surface and
symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

Those
who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life,
that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the
work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord
with himself. 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.

All art is quite useless.”

OSCAR
WILDE