They are the elect...

Happy New YEAR!!!!!! This is my first post of the New Year, and it's only fitting that I give the presumed honor to a man who found himself in a gutter, but looking at the stars.

The whole of The Picture of Dorian Gray is a beautiful quote in and of itself, and that is just not conducive to a blog post. I present in its stead,

THE PREFACE

 

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim...

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all...
The morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies... No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
Thought and language of to the artist instruments of art.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art...
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 own peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors...
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

OSCAR WILDE.