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Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.Vice and virtue are the artist__ materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feelings, the actor__ craft is the type. 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 spectators, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Oscar Wilde
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Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.Vice and virtue are the artist__ materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feelings, the actor__ craft is the type. 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 spectators, and not life, that art really mirrors.

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Art, even the art of fullest scope and widest vision, can never really show us the external world. All that it shows us is our own soul, the one world of which we have any real cognisance. And the soul itself, the soul of each one of us, is to each one of us a mystery. It hides in the dark and broods, and consciousness cannot tell us of its workings. Consciousness, indeed, is quite inadequate to explain the contents of personality. It is Art, and Art only, that reveals us to ourselves.