“Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.”

— Oscar Wilde

Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

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Oscar Wilde 812

Irish writer and poet 1854–1900

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 3 : Mountains and Song Cycles

“You see how even an illness can be romanticized. Tuberculosis got the treatment: Keats, the Lady of the Camellias, the foggy dew, and so on. We must make romantic literature out of cancer -- can you imagine that?”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Dear Boullée

“Lying stimulates one's imagination and ingenuity.”

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer

Un peu de soleil dans l'eau froide (1969, Sunlight on Cold Water, translated 1971)

“Lying is not a side effect of what RT does; it is the channel's heart.”

Masha Gessen (1967) Russian-American journalist and activist

"Mouthpieces for the Kremlin’s propaganda channel aren't brave" https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/masha-gessen-mouthpieces-for-the-kremlins-propaganda-channel-arent-brave/2014/07/29/83fecf2e-1449-11e4-98ee-daea85133bc9_story.html (29 July 2014), The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.

“The world of literature is a world where there is no reality except that of the human imagination.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 4: The Keys To Dreamland

“Imagine what might be accomplished if this talent and energy were turned to philosophy, to theology, to the arts, to imaginative literature or to education?”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)
Context: In a world populated by people who believe that through more and more information, paradise is attainable, the computer scientist is king. But I maintain that all of this is a monumental and dangerous waste of human talent and energy. Imagine what might be accomplished if this talent and energy were turned to philosophy, to theology, to the arts, to imaginative literature or to education? Who knows what we could learn from such people — perhaps why there are wars, and hunger, and homelessness and mental illness and anger.