Oscar Wilde

“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”

“The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.”

“The function of the artist is to invent, not to chronicle.”

“Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.”

“Yes, there is a terrible moral in 'Dorian Gray' - a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error...”

“I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of simple decorative arts. It would be a golden hour to the children.”

“In its primary aspect, a painting has no more spiritual message than an exquisite fragment of Venetian glass. The channels by which all noble and imaginative work in painting should touch th...”

“If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.”

“A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.”

“There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.”

“No man is rich enough to buy back his past.”

“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.”

“Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety and strangeness. Good people exasperate one's reason; bad people stir one's imagination.”

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.”

“The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.”

“America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.”

“Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.”

“How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.”

“A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.”

“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.”