# Paying for sunsets: an unverified saying and a real disagreement

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH04.P021](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH04.P021/#char=2264,2347): "Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets."

The precise saying remains unlocated. Wilde does discuss the devaluation of sunsets in *The Decay of Lying*, collected in *Intentions* (1891); the inspected witness is Gutenberg's transcription of the 1913 Methuen edition. But Vivian, Wilde's fictional speaker, gives a different explanation: cultivated taste has moved beyond Turner, while nature tediously repeats his effects. This is part of the dialogue's provocative argument that art teaches people what to see in nature, rather than an argument about admission prices. [Wilde, *The Decay of Lying*, exchange beginning ‘Certainly. Where, if not from the Impressionists’](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/887/887-h/887-h.htm).

Chesterton's answer shifts ‘payment’ into an ethical register: the preceding examples make it mean temperance, fidelity and voluntary sacrifice in gratitude for beauty. The final personal thrust turns Wilde into the representative of appreciation without restraint. That is Chesterton's polemical construction; the identified dialogue passage neither establishes the attributed saying nor documents Wilde's conduct. It supplies a useful comparison, not a verified source for Chesterton's paraphrase.

## Sources

- [Oscar Wilde, Intentions (1913 Methuen edition; Project Gutenberg transcription)](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/887/887-h/887-h.htm), Edition statement and publication history; The Decay of Lying, Vivian's long reply beginning ‘Certainly. Where, if not from the Impressionists’, especially the sunset and Turner passage

Revision 1 · 2026-11-07 · https://glosses.org/a/a_4rzcdos4/