Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar WildeRead
No art ever survived censorship; no art ever will.
Interpretation
Censorship stifles creative expression and hinders the longevity of art.
Oscar Wilde’s quote emphasizes the idea that censorship ultimately undermines the very essence and survival of art. Art thrives on freedom of expression, and when it is subject to restrictions, its true value and impact can be lost, making it impossible for such works to flourish over time.
In practice
During an art exhibition, a speaker may quote Wilde to highlight the importance of artistic freedom.
Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
London 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.
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.
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be
I'd spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then, "Nowhere Man" came, words and music, the whole damn thing, as I lay down...Song writing is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed sleep.
After all, the goal is not making art. It is living a life. Those who live their lives will leave the stuff that is really art.
For a long time, I thought when you do a box set, you're giving up; you're saying, 'OK, I don't have anything left.' But now I've listened to some of the old stuff I haven't heard in 20 to 40 years with fresh ears. It's like, 'Oh yeah, I can see where people might want to to hear some of this stuff that didn't make it onto the records.'
I consider tragedy the highest form of art.
Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words…By means of art were are sometimes sent - dimly, briefly - revelations unattainable by reason.
The moment of creative impulse is what an artist gives you. You look at a Pollock, and it can't give you the tools to do a painting like that yourself, but in doing the work, Pollock shares with you the moment of creative impulse that drove him to do that work.
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