Wilde's "The Critic as Artist"

"Each little thing we do passes into the great machine of life, which may grind our virtues into powder and make them worthless, or transform our sins into elements of a new civilisation, more marvellous and more splendid than any that has gone before." 

(I love this.)

The excerpt from Oscar Wilde's "The Critic as Artist" is written around the idea of criticism as an art, the highest form of art. 

Ernest: For, after all, even you must admit that it is much more difficult to do a thing than to talk about it.

Gilbert: More difficult to do a thing than to talk about it? Not at all.

I had never thought about doing versus reviewing in this light. But it makes sense. In order to review a piece of art, you must be knowledgeable in so much more than just that one piece, whereas the artist has no other obligations than to create. Wilde argues that the critic is the highest form of art. I agree with some of what he has to say, but not this. Without art, there are no critics. A chicken and the egg argument, almost, but there must be art to be critiqued. I think the critic is of high importance, but in no circumstance trumps the artist. 

I really liked the form of this piece. Rather than reading a long, droning essay, Wilde spiced it up with a dialogue that serves to counteract areas of debate.