Oscar Wilde
Spoken by Algernon
You see, if one plays good music, people don’t listen, and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.
– Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Act I
Themes: audience, humour, wit | Art form: Music
More quotes by Oscar Wilde
- Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another chaos, that it created in us.
- Music is the perfect type of art. Music can never reveal its ultimate secret.
- I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.
- From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician.
- I never talk during music – at least, during good music. If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it in conversation.