I’m reading Oscar Wilde’s “The Critic as Artist” (finally, after many people telling me I should), and the following few lines make me giggle:
Ernest, you are quite delightful, but your views are terribly unsound. I am afraid you have been listening to the conversation of someone older than yourself. That is always a dangerous thing to do, and if you allow it to degenerate to a habit, you will find it absolutely fatal to any intellectual development. (348-349)
Ernest. But what is the difference between literature and journalism?
Gilbert. Oh! journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read. That is all. (349)
Wilde, Oscar. “The Critic as Artist.” The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde. Ed. Richard Ellmann. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982. 340-408.
