The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered.
Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.
If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in solving the problem of poverty.
Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither.
A really well-maded buttonhole is the only link between Art and Nature.
Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.
The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.
Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance.
Dullness is the coming of age of seriousness.
In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential. In all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential.
If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
Pleasure is the only thing one should live for. Nothing ages like happiness.
It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime. Vulgarity is the conduct of others.
Only the shallow know themselves.
Time is a waste of money.
One should always be a little improbable.
There is a fatality about all good resolutions. They are invariably made too soon.
The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated.
To be premature is to be perfect.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right and wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development.
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.
Greek dress was in its essence inartistic. Nothing should reveal the body but the body.
One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.
It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man's deeper nature is soon found out.
Industry is the root of all ugliness.
The ages live in history through their anachronisms.
It is only the gods who taste of death. Apollo has passed away, but Hyacinth, whom men say he slew, lives on. Nero and Narcissus are always with us.
The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything.
The condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection is youth.
Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obscure.
There is something tragic about the enormous number of young men there are in England at the present moment who start life with perfect profiles, and end by adopting some useful profession.
To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.
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“The condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection is youth.”
ReplyDeleteIt is paradoxical, to begin with, that the condition of idleness—as a condition of perfection—might have an aim at all. Idleness as well, that freeness from productivity, which tends to be particularly anathema when coupled with youth, is in effect a condition of youth: so the paradox lies, deeper, in (as in the case of “One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art”) the positing of a false distinction between the aim and the condition bearing on a particular mode. Here the aim as well as the condition is youth. A resolution is inherent in this recognition which, unraveling, reveals the aim and the condition as mutually productive to the extent of being indistinguishable. Even down to the word: condition itself denotes both a state and its prerequisite; the state of illness and the illness itself cannot be secerned. So much for providing utility to the youth, let alone inspiring them to utility, huh?
Anyone having a problem with idleness as a condition of youth (like of a magnitude inversely proportional to years, often), or anything else in this—let me know.
I think that your general analysis seems to make sense, but I'm not sure about your idleness as a condition of youth thing. Do you mean to say that in fact to be part of the youth is to be idle? Because I don't whether you can take it that far.
ReplyDeleteI thought that the paradox was more on the level that a condition of perfection is idleness and the aim is youth, but the youth (and with youth I mean kids, not teenagers) rarely has a sense of idleness. So when one aims for perfection (and perfection being youth) they do so through idleness, meaning that they have already failed to achieve that youthfulness they strive for as the youth does not know idleness.
What do you think Ryan or anyone else? Does this seem to make sense?
I was thinking, maybe erroneously, of idleness in terms of a lack of utility. Babies are pretty useless, but they tend to get more industrious with age. And we know how Wilde feels about industry (it's "the root of all ugliness").
ReplyDeleteI think it works nicely in the way you described too. These little things are just too fertile for anyone's good.
I don't like not being able to edit comments without erecting a "post removed by" banner.
ReplyDeleteIn my role as Puppet Master, I have removed the offending "post-removed" indicator for you. There are reasons to leave traces of otherwise effaced comments -- sometimes one will think better of a comment and delete it, but others will comment on deleted material they read anyway, and the banner becomes a placeholder preserving something of the ebb and flow of the conversation. Also, as a general matter, I think it's good to let your mistakes and misspelling and hasty remarks leave scars... traditional publication creates a usually false impression of seamless controlled rationality, while looser online publication has tended to capture better the conversational character of rationality as it more usually is -- whether that conversation be between the I and the thou, the I in the we, or the I with the me...
ReplyDeleteI am honored and delighted! Would understand completely though if you think it better to reinstate it in the future.
ReplyDelete