'The Decay of Lying', part 1

One becomes rather tongue-tied reading Oscar Wilde. 'Perverse' has rarely (never, even?) been quite so delightful a word.

• I don't complain. If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture.
• What is a fine lie? Simply that which is its own evidence.
  
• He has not even the courage of other people's ideas, but insists on going directly to life for everything.
• There is such a thing as robbing a story of its reality by trying to make it true.
• Mr. James Payn is an adept in the art of concealing what is not worth finding.
  
• The only thing that can be said about them is that they find life crude, and leave it raw.
• If a novelist is base enough to go to life for his personages he should at least pretend that they are creations, and not boast of them as copies. The justification of a character in a novel is not that other persons are what they are, but that the author is what he is.
• Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.
  
• (George Meredith) is a child of realism who is not on speaking terms with his father. ... His style would be quite sufficient of itself to keep life at a respectful distance.