Maximum-assistance view: every word above everyday vocabulary is explained at every appearance; each name is introduced at its first appearance in the chapter.

THE PREFACE

The artist is the creator of beautiful things (The one who makes art is the maker of beautiful things). To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim (To show the art and hide the maker is what art aims at). The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things (The judge of art is the one who can carry over, into another form or a new stuff, what beautiful things have left on his mind).

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography (Judging art, at its best as at its worst, is a way of writing one's own life story). Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming (Those who read ugly meanings into beautiful things are rotten within, and not even pleasing with it). This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated (Those who read beautiful meanings into beautiful things are the ones whose taste has been trained). For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty (They are the chosen few for whom beautiful things mean nothing but beauty).

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book (There is no book that is good or bad in the way behaviour is). Books are well written, or badly written. That is all (Books are well written or badly written. That is the whole of it).

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass (Our century's dislike of art that shows life as it is, is the fury of Caliban, the brute in the old play, catching sight of his own face in a mirror).

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass (Our century's dislike of art that dreams beyond life is the fury of that same brute at not finding his own face in the mirror). The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist (How a man lives, well or badly, is part of what the maker of art works with), but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium (but the rightness of art lies in the faultless use of a stuff that is never faultless). No artist desires to prove anything (No maker of art wants to prove anything). Even things that are true can be proved (Even things that are true can be proved). No artist has ethical sympathies (No maker of art takes sides on right and wrong). An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style (Taking such a side, in a maker of art, is a trick of manner that cannot be forgiven). No artist is ever morbid (No maker of art is ever sick in mind). The artist can express everything. Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art (Thinking and language are, to the maker of art, tools of a craft). Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art (Wrongdoing and goodness are, to the maker of art, the stuff a craft is made from). From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician (Looked at as shape, the pattern for all the arts is the art of music). From the point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the type (Looked at as feeling, the actor's craft is the pattern). All art is at once surface and symbol (All art is at the same time a surface and a thing that stands for something else). Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril (Those who go below the surface do so at their own risk). Those who read the symbol do so at their peril (Those who read what it stands for do so at their own risk). It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors (It is the one looking on, not life, that art truly gives back). Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital (People differing about a work of art shows the work is new, many-sided and alive). When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself (When the judges of art fall out, the maker of it is at one with himself). We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it (A man may be forgiven for making a useful thing, so long as he does not admire it). The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely (The one excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it with all one's heart).

All art is quite useless (All art is entirely without use).

OSCAR WILDE (OSCAR WILDE, the author of this book)