Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“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.”
—
Oscar Wilde
,
book
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Last update Sept. 27, 2023.
History
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Oscar Wilde 812
Irish writer and poet 1854–1900Related quotes
“We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it”
Oscar Wilde
(1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Variant: All art is immoral.
“The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
(1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
“Does being a man make all things forgivable and being a woman all things unforgivable?”
Premchand
(1880–1936) Hindi writer
Portrayal of Women in Premchands Stories A Critique
Referencing Oscar Wilde from the preface of "The Picture of Dorian Gray"; "All art is quite useless".
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)
Source: Moab Is My Washpot
Context: … but love, like all art, as Oscar said, it's quite useless. It is the useless things that make life worth living and that make life dangerous too: wine, love, art, beauty. Without them life is safe but not worth bothering with.
Other Inquisitions (1952), The Modesty of History
Context: Only one thing is more admirable than the admirable reply of the Saxon king: that an Icelander, a man of the lineage of the vanquished, has perpetuated the reply. It is as if a Carthaginian had bequeathed to us the memory of the exploit of Regulus. Saxo Grammaticus wrote with justification in his Gesta Danorum: "The men of Thule [Iceland] are very fond of learning and of recording the history of all peoples and they are equally pleased to reveal the excellences of others or of themselves."
Not the day when the Saxon said the words, but the day when an enemy perpetuated them, was the historic date. A date that is a prophecy of something still in the future: the day when races and nations will be cast into oblivion, and the solidarity of all mankind will be established.