Quotes about Expression

I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood.

Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.

Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates.

To call an artist morbid because he deals with morbidity as his subject-matter is as silly as if one called Shakespeare mad because he wrote 'King Lear.

The only artists I have ever known, who are personally delightful, are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfect uninteresting in what they are.

The arts that have escaped [uniformity] best are the arts in which the public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it.

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. In art, as in politics, there is but one origin for all revolutions, a desire on the part of man for a nobler form of life, for a freer method and opportunity of expression

Looking around his hotel room not long before expiring: This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has to go.

Nothing really at any period of my life was ever of the smallest importance to me compared with Art. But in the case of an artist, weakness is nothing less than a crime, when it is a weakness that paralyses the imagination

If a personality fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that personality selects is absolutely delightful to me.

Love is a more wonderful thing than art.' 'They are both simply forms of imitation,' remarked Lord Henry.

Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.