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 →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.
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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Arthur O'ShaughnessyRead
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Bruce SpringsteenRead
To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have.
Susan SontagRead
But you listen to Coltrane and that's something human, something that's about elevation. It's like making love to a woman. It's about something of value, it's not just loud. It doesn't have that violent connotation to it. I wanted to be a jazz musician so bad, but I really couldn't. There was no way I could figure out to learn how to play.
Wynton MarsalisRead
Dancing is, in itself, a very trifling and silly thing: but it is one of those established follies to which people of sense are sometimes obliged to conform; and then they should be able to do it well. And though I would not have you a dancer, yet, when you do dance, I would have you dance well, as I would have you do everything you do well.
Lord ChesterfieldRead
Writing well involves walking the path of most resistance. Sitting still, being patient, allowing the lunatic dream to take shape on the page, then the shaping, the pencil on the page, breathing, slowing down, being willing–no, more than willing, being wide open–to press the bruise until it blossoms.
Dani ShapiroRead