#OSCAR WILDE QUOTES HOW TO#

It can teach us how to escape from our experience, and to realise the experiences of those who are greater than we are. It can help us to leave the age in which we were born, and to pass into other ages, and find ourselves not exiled from their air. It can lead us away from surroundings whose beauty is dimmed to us by the mist of familiarity, or whose ignoble ugliness and sordid claims are marring the perfection of our development. One thing, however, Ernest, it can do for us. It fills us with impossible desires, and makes us follow what we know we cannot gain.

It is wiser than we are, and its wisdom is bitter. It is sick with many maladies, and has memories of curious sins. It is something that has dwelt in fearful places, and in ancient sepulchres has made its abode. “And so, it is not our own life that we live, but the lives of the dead, and the soul that dwells within us is no single spiritual entity, making us personal and individual, created for our service, and entering into us for our joy. The Critic As Artist: With Some Remarks on the Importance of Doing Nothing and Discussing Everything It is for him that pictures are painted, books written, and marble hewn into form.” His sole aim is to chronicle his own impressions. It is the only civilized form of autobiography, as it deals not with events, but with the thoughts of one's life not with life's physical accidents of deed or circumstance, but with the spiritual moods and imaginative passions of the mind.The best that one can say of most modern creative art is that it is just a little less vulgar than reality, and so the critic, with his fine sense of distinction and sure instinct of delicate refinement, will prefer to look into the silver mirror or through the woven veil, and will turn his eyes away from the chaos and clamor of actual existence, though the mirror be tarnished and the veil be torn. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague.

It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. “That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul.

Oscar wilde quotes