Oscar Wilde, Art and Morality: A Defence of "The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I must admit that, either from temperament or taste, or from both, I am quite incapable of understanding how any work of art can be criticised from a moral standpoint. The sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate;””

— Unknown

“But his story is also a vivid, though carefully considered, exposure of the corruption of a soul, with a very plain moral, pushed home, to the effect that vice and crime make people coarse and ugly.””

— Unknown

“The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young: let him so live that when old age comes he shall at least have the satisfaction of knowing that no opportunity of pleasure and indulgence has escaped untasted.””

— Unknown

“I remain, Sir, your obedient servant, OSCAR WILDE. The correspondence continued for three weeks longer, but Oscar Wilde took no further part in it.””

— Unknown

“I dislike newspaper controversies of any kind, and of the two hundred and sixteen criticisms of "Dorian Gray," that have passed from my library table into the waste-paper basket I have taken public notice of only three.””

— Unknown

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

— Unknown

“When it (the public) says a work of art is grossly unintelligible, it means that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when it describes a work as grossly immoral, it means that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true. The former expression has reference to style; the latter to subject-matter.””

— Unknown

“For 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 æsthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame. It will be to each man what he is himself. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.””

— Unknown

“That the editor of the St. James's Gazette should have employed Caliban as his art-critic was possibly natural. The editor of the Scots Observer should not have allowed Thersites to make mows in his reviews. It is unworthy of so distinguished a man of letters.””

— Unknown