Intentions《读书笔记》

收入的是王尔德的文学论文，有点是故作惊人之论，有些算得上是真知灼见。

摘录：

Nobody with the true historical sense ever dreams of blaming Nero or scolding Tiberius or censuring Caesar Borgia. These personages have become like the puppets of a play. They may fill us with terror or horror or wonder but they do not harm us.

As a rule I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories or have never done anything worth remembering; which however is no doubt the true explanation of their popularity as the English public always feels perfectly at its ease when a mediocrity is talking to it.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

Every great man nowadays has his disciples and it is always Judas who writes the biography.

Formerly we used to canonise our heroes. The modern method is to vulgarise them. Cheap editions of great books may be delightful but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable.

It is difficult not to be unjust to what one loves.

Learned conversation is either the affectation of the ignorant or the profession of the mentally unemployed.

Yes from the soul. That is what the highest criticism really is the record of one's own soul.

There are as many Hamlets as there are melancholies.

下面一段，王尔德说明了我们为什么要读悲剧性的作品，对我也是个启发：

ERNEST. Must we go then to Art for everything?

GILBERT. For everything. Because Art does not hurt us. The tears that we shed at a play are a type of the exquisite sterile emotions that it is the function of Art to awaken. We weep but we are not wounded. We grieve but our grief is not bitter. In the actual life of man sorrow as Spinoza says somewhere is a passage to a lesser perfection. But the sorrow with which Art fills us both purifies and initiates if I may quote once more from the great art critic of the Greeks. It is through Art and through Art only that we can realise our perfection; through Art and through Art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

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An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic – a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.

The true aim of education was the love of beauty and that the methods by which education should work were the development of temperament the cultivation of taste and the creation of the critical spirit.

It is always more difficult to destroy than it is to create and when what one has to destroy is vulgarity and stupidity the task of destruction needs not merely courage but also contempt.

When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.

There is only one thing worse than Injustice and that is Justice without her sword in her hand.

There is no sin except stupidity.

这句话反映的是王尔德的偏见：

Who cares what happens to them? In literature we require distinction charm beauty and imaginative power. We don't want to be harrowed and disgusted with an account of the doings of the lower orders.

It is a humiliating confession but we are all of us made out of the same stuff. In Falstaff there is something of Hamlet in Hamlet there is not a little of Falstaff. The fat knight has his moods of melancholy and the young prince his moments of coarse humour.

王尔德会刻薄人，如说作家Meredith的这一句：

As a writer he has mastered everything except language: as a novelist he can do everything except tell a story: as an artist he is everything except articulate.

To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty.