“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
Documented source
Every quote here is traced to a documented source. How we verify →
About this line
It comes from “Our Note Book,” the weekly column Chesterton wrote for the Illustrated London News, on 5 May 1928. Just before it, he answers people who called art unmoral: “but then I do not think that art is unmoral.”
Eight years earlier, in the same column, he had tried the idea on politics: “it consists in drawing the line somewhere.” By 1928 the line had found its subject.
Online it’s often credited to Oscar Wilde. Quote Investigator traced it to Chesterton’s column and found no evidence that Wilde ever said it.
Why we carry this line
I loved this line the first time I read it, probably because I’d just taken up abstract painting. Knowing where to stop: priceless. Back then, it was credited to Oscar Wilde.
When we learned he never said it, we took it off the site. Our research found the man who did. Now it’s back, under the right name.
The design
A thin rule runs under “the line.” The sentence draws exactly what it describes. “Somewhere” lands just past the rule, in italics: the line drawn, and the word that keeps it honest.
