“ But the artist, who accepts the facts of life, and yet transforms them into shapes of beauty, and makes them vehicles of pity or of awe, and shows their colour-element, and their wonder, and their true ethical import also, and builds out of them a world more real than reality itself, and of loftier and more noble import—who shall set limits to him? ”
Oscar Wilde, Intentions (1891). copy citation
| Author | Oscar Wilde |
|---|---|
| Source | Intentions |
| Topic | beauty reality |
| Date | 1891 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/887/887-h/887-h.htm |
Context
“They chronicle, with degrading avidity, the sins of the second-rate, and with the conscientiousness of the illiterate give us accurate and prosaic details of the doings of people of absolutely no interest whatsoever. But the artist, who accepts the facts of life, and yet transforms them into shapes of beauty, and makes them vehicles of pity or of awe, and shows their colour-element, and their wonder, and their true ethical import also, and builds out of them a world more real than reality itself, and of loftier and more noble import—who shall set limits to him? Not the apostles of that new Journalism which is but the old vulgarity ‘writ large.’ Not the apostles of that new Puritanism, which is but the whine of the hypocrite, and is both writ and spoken badly.”
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