Oscar Wilde

Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance.

Oscar Wilde

Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.

Oscar Wilde

Art is not to be taught in Academies. It is what one looks at, not what one listens to, that makes the artist. The real schools should be the streets.

Oscar Wilde

Art is rarely intelligible to the criminal classes.

Oscar Wilde

Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.

Oscar Wilde

Art never expresses anything but itself.

Oscar Wilde

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

Oscar Wilde

Art persists, it timelessly continues.

Oscar Wilde

As a rule, I think they are quite impossible. Geniuses talk so much, don’t they? Such a bad habit! And they are always thinking about themselves, when I want them to be thinking about me.

Oscar Wilde

As for modern journalism, it is not my business to defend it. It justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest.

Oscar Wilde