Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Art is often created for its beauty and emotional impact, rather than for practical use.
Oscar Wilde's quote suggests that the creation of art is justified by the intense admiration and appreciation it can inspire, rather than its utility. He provocatively claims that all art is 'quite useless', highlighting that its value lies in its ability to evoke feelings and provoke thought, rather than serving a functional purpose in society.
Themes
ArtUselessnessAdmirationBeautyCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
During an art appreciation class, one might say this quote to emphasize the subjective value of beauty in art.
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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Whoever has the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. Because a character will never die! A man will die, a writer, the instrument of creation: but what he has created will never die!
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I work very deliberately, with a plan. But sometimes I come to a point that I planned as the end and it needs softening. Ending a novel is almost like putting a child to sleep - it can't be done abruptly.
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Whatever your life's pursuit -- art, poetry, sculpture, music, whatever your occupation may be -- you can be as spiritual as clergy, always living a life of praise.
Hazrat Inayat KhanRead