Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Art should be genuine and not cater to popular opinion; rather, society should strive to appreciate and understand art.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde emphasizes the importance of authenticity in art, suggesting that true artistry should not be diluted to merely please the masses. Instead, he believes that it is the responsibility of the public to cultivate their own artistic sensibilities and to seek deeper meanings in the works presented to them, fostering a richer cultural environment.
Themes
ArtPublicCreativityAppreciationAuthenticity
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about the role of artists at a gallery opening.
More from Oscar Wilde
All quotes βLondon 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.
Oscar WildeRead
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
Oscar WildeRead
A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
Oscar WildeRead
His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
Oscar WildeRead
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It's certainly true that when I was young, writing seemed to me so important that I would have sacrificed almost anything to it ... Because I thought of the world in which I wrote -- the world I created -- as somehow much more enormously alive than the world I was actually living in.
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