Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Artists interpret reality in unique ways rather than merely reflecting it as it is.
Oscar Wilde suggests that true artistry involves a subjective interpretation of reality, where an artist transforms their perception into a creative expression. If an artist were to see the world solely as it is, devoid of imagination or perception, their artistic vision and creativity would be diminished, leading them to lose their artistic identity.
Themes
ArtCreativityInterpretationImaginationVision
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech at an art gala discussing the nature of creativity.
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
People are already finding ways to make their music and play it in front of people and have a life in music, I guess, and I think that's pretty much all you can ask.
David ByrneRead
Through most of my career, I've made a decent living making movies no one wants to see.
Jean-Luc GodardRead
I took 'Grease' to play my trump card, my voice, and get attention that would lead to auditions for serious work like 'Angels in America.' But I backed myself into a corner with 'Grease,' and it took me 17 years to get out.
Billy PorterRead
I don't believe that a lot of the things I hear on the air today are going to be played for as long a time as Coleman Hawkins records or Brahms concertos.
Oscar PetersonRead
Good cinema is what we can believe, and bad cinema is what we can't believe.
Abbas KiarostamiRead
In fiction, imaginary people become realer to us than any named celebrity glimpsed in a series of rumored events, whose causes and subtler ramifications must remain in the dark. An invented figure like Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary emerges fully into the light of understanding, which brings with it identification, sympathy and pity.
John UpdikeRead