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There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
Oscar Wilde
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The quality of a book is independent of its moral content; it is defined by the writing itself.

Oscar Wilde emphasizes that books should be judged solely on their literary quality, rather than their moral implications. This perspective suggests that the artistry of writing transcends moral judgments, and that both good and bad literature can exist regardless of the messages they convey.

Themes

BooksLiteratureWritingMoralityQuality

In practice

Example use cases

Use this quote when discussing the value of literature in a book club.

More from Oscar Wilde

Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
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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.
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Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
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A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
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His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
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