The Preface
The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and ceal the artist is arts aim.
The critic is he who 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 iiful things are corrupt without being charming.
This is a fault.
Those who fiiful meanings iiful 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.
The eenth tury dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own fa a glass.
The eenth tury dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own fa a glass.
The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art sists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true be proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies.
Ahical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist express everything.
Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.
Vid 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 musi.
From the point of view of feeling, the actors craft is the type.
All art is at once surfad symbol.
Those who go beh 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, plex, and vital.
When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.
We five 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