Oscar Wilde

For there is no art where there is no style, and no style where there is no unity, and unity is of the individual.

In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential. In all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential.

With some remarks upon the importance of doing nothing. A DIALOGUE . Part I. Persons : Gilbert and Ernest . Scene : the library of a house in Piccadilly , overlooking the Green Park Gilbert ( at the Piano ). My dear Ernest, what are you laughing at? Ernest ( looking up ). At a capital story that I have just come across in this volume of Reminiscences that I have found on your table. Gilbert . What is the book? Ah! I see. I have not read it yet. Is it good? Ernest . Well, while you have been ...

With some remarks on the importance of discussing everything. A DIALOGUE : Part II. Persons : the same . Scene : the same . Ernest . The ortolans were delightful, and the Chambertin perfect, and now let us return to the point at issue. Gilbert . Ah! don’t let us do that. Conversation should touch everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing. Let us talk about Moral Indignation , its Cause and Cure , a subject on which I think of writing: or about The Survival of Thersites , as shown by the English comic papers; or about any topic ...

Society sooner or later must return to its lost leader, the cultured and fascinating liar. Who he was who first, without ever having gone out to the rude chase, told the wandering cavemen at sunset how he had dragged the Megatherium from the purple darkness of its jasper cave, or slain the Mammoth in single combat and brought back its gilded tusks, we cannot tell, and not one of our modern anthropologists, for all their much-boasted science, has had the ordinary courage to tell us. Whatever was his name or race, he certainly was the true founder of social intercourse. ...

An observation A DIALOGUE . Persons : Cyril and Vivian . Scene : the Library of a country house in Nottinghamshire . Cyril ( coming in through the open window from the terrace ). My dear Vivian, don’t coop yourself up all day in the library. It is a perfectly lovely afternoon. The air is exquisite. There is a mist upon the woods, like the purple bloom upon a plum. Let us go and lie on the grass and smoke cigarettes and enjoy Nature. Vivian. Enjoy Nature! I am glad to say that I have entirely lost that faculty. People ...

AUTHOR: OSCAR WILDE EDITOR: ROBERT ROSS TRANSCRIBED FROM THE 1913 METHUEN AND CO EDITION BY DAVID PRICE ‘The English Renaissance of Art’ was delivered as a lecture for the first time in the Chickering Hall, New York, on January 9, 1882. A portion of it was reported in the New York Tribune on the following day and in other American papers subsequently. Since then this portion has been reprinted, more or less accurately, from time to time, in unauthorised editions. There are in existence no less than four copies of the lecture, the earliest of which is entirely in the ...

Their authority is a thing blind, deaf, hideous, grotesque, tragic, amusing, serious, and obscene. It is impossible for the artist to live with the People. All despots bribe. The people bribe and brutalise. Who told them to exercise authority? They were made to live, to listen, and to love. Someone has done them a great wrong. They have marred themselves by imitation of their inferiors. They have taken the sceptre of the Prince. How should they use it? They have taken the triple tiara of the Pope. How should they carry its burden? They are as a clown whose heart ...

The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity.

The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact, scarcely anyone at all escapes. Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like Darwin; a great poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M. Renan; a supreme artist, like Flaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to keep himself out of reach of the clamorous claims of others, to ...

A note on illusion. In many of the somewhat violent attacks that have recently been made on that splendour of mounting which now characterises our Shakespearian revivals in England, it seems to have been tacitly assumed by the critics that Shakespeare himself was more or less indifferent to the costumes of his actors, and that, could he see Mrs. Langtry’s production of Antony and Cleopatra , he would probably say that the play, and the play only, is the thing, and that everything else is leather and prunella. While, as regards any historical accuracy in dress, Lord Lytton, in an ...

There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannises over the body. There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.

It is through Art, and through Art only, that we can realise our perfection; through Art, and through Art only, that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence. This results not merely from the fact that nothing that one can imagine is worth doing, and that one can imagine everything, but from the subtle law that emotional forces, like the forces of the physical sphere, are limited in extent and energy.

But, perhaps, you will tell me that the external beauty of the world has almost entirely passed away from us, that the artist dwells no longer in the midst of the lovely surroundings which, in ages past, were the natural inheritance of every one, and that art is very difficult in this unlovely town of ours, where, as you go to your work in the morning, or return from it at eventide, you have to pass through street after street of the most foolish and stupid architecture that the world has ever seen; architecture, where every lovely Greek form is ...

For there can be no great sculpture without a beautiful national life, and the commercial spirit of England modern life has killed that; no great drama without a noble national life, and the commercial spirit of England has killed that too.

The thoroughly well-informed man—that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

We should not be content to have the salesman stand between us - the salesman who knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it. And watching the workman will teach that most important lesson - the nobility of all rational workmanship.