The Critic as Artist Quotes

Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.

– Oscar Wilde

To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.

– Oscar Wilde

One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

– Oscar Wilde

Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.

– Oscar Wilde

The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

– Oscar Wilde

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

– Oscar Wilde

I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood.

– Oscar Wilde

Action…is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.

– Oscar Wilde

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

– Oscar Wilde

Yes, the public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

– Oscar Wilde

Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.

– Oscar Wilde

In literature mere egotism is delightful…Even in actual life egotism is not without its attractions. When people talk to us about others they are usually dull. When they talk to us about themselves they are nearly always interesting, and if one could shut them up, when they become wearisome, as easily as one can shut up a book of which one has grown wearied, they would be perfect absolutely.

– Oscar Wilde

Newspapers…give us the bald, sordid, disgusting facts of life. They chronicle, with degrading avidity, the sins of the second-rate, and with the conscientiousness of the illiterate give us accurate and prosaic details of the doings of people of absolutely no interest whatsoever.

– Oscar Wilde

Conversation should touch everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing.

– Oscar Wilde

What is mind but motion in the intellectual sphere.

– Oscar Wilde

To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.

– Oscar Wilde

It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.

– Oscar Wilde

They have degraded the invisible arts into the obvious arts, and the one thing not worth looking at is the obvious.

– Oscar Wilde

Learned conversation is either the affectation of the ignorant or the profession of the mentally unemployed.

– Oscar Wilde

The security of Society lies in custom and unconscious instinct, and the basis of the stability of Society, as a healthy organism, is the complete absence of any intelligence amongst its members.

– Oscar Wilde