THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY: THE PREFACE.

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art' aim.
The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impressions of beautiful things. 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 a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
These are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.
There is no such a thing as moral or an inmoral book. Books are well written, o bad written.That is all.
The moral life of a man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desire to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.. No artist is even morbid. The artist can express everything. Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an 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 peril.
It is the spectator, an not life, that really mirrors.