Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Art embodies the depth of human experience, while artists often approach their craft with playful irreverence.
In this quote, Oscar Wilde suggests that art holds profound significance in society, serving as a mirror to human experiences and emotions. Conversely, he points out that artists possess a unique perspective, approaching their work not with solemnity but with a sense of playfulness, implying that true creativity thrives in an environment free from seriousness and constraint.
Themes
ArtArtistSeriousnessCreativityExpression
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of creativity in education, you could say, 'As Oscar Wilde reminds us, art is the only serious thing in the world.'
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.
Oscar WildeRead
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
Similar quotes
Good architecture should be a projection of life itself, and that implies an intimate knowledge of biological, social, technical, and artistic problems.
Walter GropiusRead
The merit of painting lies in the exactness of reproduction. Painting is a science and all sciences are based on mathematics. No human inquiry can be a science unless it pursues its path through mathematical exposition and demonstration.
Leonardo Da VinciRead
The white paintings came first; my silent piece came later.
John CageRead
Art cannot change the world, but it can contribute to changing the consciousness and drives of the men and women who could change the world.
Herbert MarcuseRead
I was born in a world of opera, theatre, films, poetry, art, and therefore, out of the wire, I made a stage. That's why they call me a high wire artist.
Philippe PetitRead
Not since the Lord himself showed his stuff to Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones had anyone brought such grace and skill to the reconstruction of animals from disarticulated skeletons. Charles R. Knight, most celebrated of artists in the reanimation of fossils, painted all the canonical figures of dinosaurs that fire our fear and imagination to this day.
Stephen Jay GouldRead