“All art is quite useless.”
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Variant: All art is immoral.
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Oscar Wilde812
Irish writer and poet 1854–1900Related quotes
George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London
Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 31
Context: Beggars do not work, it is said; but then, what is work? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, bronchitis etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course — but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout-in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering.
Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant
Variant: There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet
Ibid., p. 279
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Porque é bela a arte? Porque é inútil. Porque é feia a vida? Porque é toda fins e propósitos e intenções.
“All great art has madness, and quite a lot of bad art has it, too.”
William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer
My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)
Wilhelm Bittrich (1894–1979) German general
Quoted in "The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's S.S." - Page 439 - by Heinz Höhne, R. Barry - 1969
“I never feel quite complete unless I'm doing all the arts-visual, musical, literary.”
Dick Higgins (1938–1998) English composer and poet
The Ruud Jansson Mail Interview 1995
William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author, cofounder of Johns Hopkins Hospi…
On the Educational Value of the Medical Society (1903), p. 333