Today on the eve of my birthday I would like to share with you my favorite quote of all time, by the mighty Oscar Wilde
This appears in the preface of my little faux leather book dating somewhere in the 1950's found in a great secondhand bookshop in Derbyshire.
"The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.
The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.
The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism
is a mode of autobiography.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in
beautiful things are the cultivated. For
these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or
badly written. That is all."
It gets better...
"We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless."
When he says useless he is speaking of it being an impractical object and it is enough to simply enjoy it for enjoyments sake. A man after my own heart. All art may be useless in practical terms, but my god it is invaluable in spiritual terms.
