An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty.

– Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 1. Basil tells Lord Henry that art for the artist should be about creating beauty, and not inserting "his own life" into his work. Basil has been explaining that he doesn’t wish to exhibit his painting of Dorian because there is too much of himself in it, while Henry has been countering that poets put their passions on display when they publish their poetry.