THE ARTiST ls the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim
The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautifulthings. The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is afault Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is ahope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly writtenThat’s all.
The nineteenth-century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.The nineteenth-century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in aglass.
The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consistsin the perfect use of an imperfect medium.
No artist desires to prove anything. Even things tha are true can be proved. No artist has ethicasympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.
No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything
Thought and language are to the artist instrumants of an art
Vice and virture are to the materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all thearts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the type.
All art is at once surface and symbol
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. lt is the spectator, and not life, that art reallymirrors.
Dversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excusefor making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.
