The Picture of Dorian Gray
CHAPTER I. · 1/21
The Picture of Dorian Gray
CHAPTER I.
1The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Contents THE PREFACE THE PREFACE The artist is the creator of beautiful things. 2To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. 3The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. 4The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. 5Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. 6This is a fault. 7Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. 8For these there is hope. 9They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty. 10There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. 11Books are well written, or badly written. 12That is all. 13The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. 14The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. 15The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. 16No artist desires to prove anything. 17Even things that are true can be proved. 18No artist has ethical sympathies. 19An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. 20No artist is ever morbid. 21The artist can express everything. 22Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. 23Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. 24From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. 25From the point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the type. 26All art is at once surface and symbol. 27Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. 28Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. 29It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. 30Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. 31When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. 32We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. 33The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. 34All art is quite useless. 35OSCAR WILDE
1 / 21