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
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Tom's great yellow bronze mask all draped upon an iron framework. An inhibited, nerve-drawn; dropped face - as if hung on a scaffold of heavy private brooding; and thought.
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To say that "the camera cannot lie" is merely to underline the multiple deceits that are now practised in its name.
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I don't know, my music has always just come from where the wind blew me. Like where I'm at during a particular moment in time.
Tom PettyRead
When you start to think of the arts as not this thing that is going to get you somewhere in terms of becoming an artist or becoming famous or whatever it is that people do, but rather a way of making being in the world not just bearable, but fascinating, then it starts to get interesting again.
Lynda BarryRead