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 transalte 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 meaning in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.
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There is no such thing as a moral or an inmoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
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The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing is own face in a glass.
The moral life of man forms part of the subject matter of the artist, but the morality of art consist 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.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
OSCAR WILDE
