Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
Art creates an incomparable and unique effect, and, having done so, passes on to other things. Nature, upon the other hand, forgetting that that imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeating this effect until we all become absolutely wearied of it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Art has a unique impact that inspires originality, while nature's repetitive patterns can lead to indifference.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde emphasizes the distinctiveness of art and its ability to evoke powerful emotions, contrasting it with nature's tendency to repetitively recreate effects that may eventually tire us. While art seeks to innovate and inspire, nature's duplicative tendencies can diminish our appreciation, highlighting a dynamic interplay between originality and repetition in both human creativity and the natural world.
Themes
ArtNatureOriginalityRepetitionCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in an art class to discuss the significance of originality in creative work.
More from Oscar Wilde
All quotes →London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce the serious people, or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don't know.
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When one has never heard a man's name in the course of one's life, it speaks volumes for him; he must be quite respectable.
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Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
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A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
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His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
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