“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”

— Oscar Wilde, book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Variant: There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all." by Oscar Wilde?

Oscar Wilde812

Irish writer and poet 1854–1900

Related quotes

“There is no such thing, wrote Oscar Wilde, as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. Presumably, then, Mein Kampf would have been all right had it been better written.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Trash, Violence, and Versace: But Is It Art? http://www.city-journal.org/html/8_1_urbanities-trash.html (Winter 1998). <br class="br">City Journal (1998 - 2008)

“Yet with every allowance, one feels it difficult to see how any mortal ever could consider this Koran as a Book written in Heaven, too good for the Earth; as a well-written book, or indeed as a book at all; and not a bewildered rhapsody; written, so far as writing goes, as badly as almost any book ever was!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

“A lot of truths about the living world are recorded in bad books; they are just badly written about.”

Joseph Roth (1894–1939) austrian novelist and journalist

Source: The Radetzky March

Tommaso Campanella (1568–1639) Italian philosopher, theologian, astrologer, and poet

"Letter of 1607", as cited by Eisenstein, Elizabeth L., 2012, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge University Press, p. 218.

“The problem of knowledge is that there are many more books on birds written by ornithologists than books on birds written by birds and books on ornithologists written by birds”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“If a book is well written, I always find it too short.”

Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility

Variant: [I]f a book is well written, I always find it too short.
Source: Sense and Sensibility

“I regard my life as rather a failure in the only thing in which I wanted it to succeed. I have not written the books I ought to have written and I have written a lot of books I should not have written.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

Response to a would be biographer in 1980, as quoted in "When Stephen met Sylvia" in The Guardian (24 April 2004) http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1201328,00.html <br class="br">Context: I am very honoured by your wanting to write a life of me. But the fact is I regard my life as rather a failure in the only thing in which I wanted it to succeed. I have not written the books I ought to have written and I have written a lot of books I should not have written. My life as lived by me has been interesting to me but to write truthfully about it would probably cause much pain to people close to me — and I always feel that the feelings of the living are more important than the monuments of the dead.

“God has, in fact, written two books, not just one. Of course, we are all familiar with the first book he wrote, namely Scripture. But he has written a second book called creation.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

“In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated (1894)

“Many counterrevolutionary books have been written in favor of the Revolution. But Burke has written a revolutionary book against the Revolution.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 104; on Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).
Blüthenstaub (1798)

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Oscar Wilde812

Related quotes

Related topics

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”