Quotes About Progress

The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms.

You are remarkably modern, Mabel. A little too modern, perhaps. Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern. One is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly.

JACK You're quite perfect, Miss Fairfax. GWENDOLEN Oh! I hope I am not that. It would leave no room for developments, and I intend to develop in many directions.

It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free.

As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested.

The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves.  The Greeks were quite right there.  Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible.  Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralising.  On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends. 

At every single moment of one's life one is what one is going to be no less than what one has been.

You have not realized how I have developed. I was a schoolboy when you knew me. I am a man now. I have new passions new thoughts new ideas. I am different but you must not like me less. I am changed but you must always be my friend.

I should be sorry to be on the same level as an age like this.

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. In art, as in politics, there is but one origin for all revolutions, a desire on the part of man for a nobler form of life, for a freer method and opportunity of expression

Discúlpeme, no le había reconocido: he cambiado mucho.

Comfort is the only thing our civilisation can give us.

For the past is what man should not have been.  The present is what man ought not to be.  The future is what artists are.

Industry is the root of all ugliness.

Practice precedes perfection.

Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern.  One is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly. 

If the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different.

Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality.

Give women the right opportunities and they are capable of everything.

There are only two ways, as you know, of becoming civilized. One is by being cultured, the other is by being corrupt.

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

The evolution of man is slow. The injustice of men is great.

Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age.

The longer I live, Dorian, the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us. In art, as in politics, les grandperes ont toujours tort.