Oscar Wilde - Work Quotes

24 Sourced Quotes

View all Oscar Wilde Quotes
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want.

Oscar Wilde
No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide. I can quite understand how any ordinary critic would be strongly prejudiced against a work that was accompanied by a premature and unnecessary panegyric from the publisher. A publisher is simply a useful middle-man. It is not for him to anticipate the verdict of criticism.

Oscar Wilde
I am quite incapable of understanding how any work of art can be criticized from a moral standpoint. The sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate.

Oscar Wilde
There are works which wait, and which one does not understand for a long time; the reason is that they bring answers to questions which have not yet been raised; for the question often arrives a terribly long time after the answer.

Oscar Wilde
A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

Oscar Wilde
A temperament capable of receiving, through an imaginative medium, and under imaginative conditions, new and beautiful impressions, is the only temperament that can appreciate a work of art.

Oscar Wilde
Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.

Oscar Wilde
I write because it gives me the greatest possible artistic pleasure to write. If my work pleases the few I am gratified. As for the mob, I have no desire to be a popular novelist. It is far too easy.

Oscar Wilde
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work
is new, complex, and vital.

Oscar Wilde
No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.

Oscar Wilde
I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

Oscar Wilde
One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art.

Oscar Wilde
Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those he has selected.

Oscar Wilde
The best work in literature is always done by those who do not depend on it for their daily bread and the highest form of literature, Poetry, brings no wealth to the singer.

Oscar Wilde
The English public takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral.

Oscar Wilde
If a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise authority over it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot receive any artistic impression from it at all. The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art. The spectator is to be receptive. He is to be the violin on which the master is to play. And the more completely he can suppress his own silly views, his own foolish prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what Art should be, or should not be, the more likely he is to understand and appreciate the work of art in question.

Oscar Wilde
There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America. It was not until I had seen the water-works at Chicago that I realised the wonders of machinery; the rise and fall of the steel rods, the symmetrical motion of the great wheels is the most beautiful rhythmic thing I have ever seen.

Oscar Wilde
Indeed I have always been of the opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to do.

Oscar Wilde
It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done.

Oscar Wilde
Do you want to know the great drama of my life? It's that I have put my genius into my life; all I've put into my works is my talent.

Oscar Wilde
It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don't mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind. -Algernon

Oscar Wilde
Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates.

Oscar Wilde
In England an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.

Oscar Wilde
The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

Oscar Wilde