If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.
From Oscar Wilde
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.
Who, being loved, is poor?
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Everything popular is wrong.
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.
When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.
14 perspectives
10 perspectives
8 perspectives
7 perspectives
3 perspectives
2 perspectives