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So lets knock a couple back and make some noise -- Oscar Wilde
The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered. -- Oscar Wilde
The evolution of man is slow. The injustice of men is great. -- Oscar Wilde
I am covered with fine gold," said the Prince, "you must take it off, leaf by leaf, and give it to my poor. -- Oscar Wilde
Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole! -- Oscar Wilde
The 19thc hatred of Realism is Caliban's enraged reaction to seeing his own face in the mirror. The 19thc rejection of Romanticism is Caliban's fury at not seeing his face reflected in the mirror. -- Oscar Wilde
One must be serious about something, if one wants to have any amusement in life. -- Oscar Wilde
and life, seeing her own image, was still, and dared not to speak. -- Oscar Wilde
Lady Bracknell. Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well.
Algernon. I'm feeling very well, Aunt Augusta.
Lady Bracknell. That's not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together. -- Oscar Wilde
I am told, on excellent authority, that her father keeps an American dry-goods store," said Sir Thomas Burdon, -- Oscar Wilde
Is it thy will that I should wax and wane,
Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey,
And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain
Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day? -- Oscar Wilde
Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched. -- Oscar Wilde
The one charm about the past is that it is the past. -- Oscar Wilde
He hasn't an enemy in the world, and none of his friend like him. -- Oscar Wilde
Possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any question
simple curiosity. I have a theory that it is always the women who propose -- Oscar Wilde
Really, this horrid House of Commons quite ruins our husbands for us. I think the Lower House by far the greatest blow to a happy married life that there has been since that terrible thing called the Higher Education of Women was invented. -- Oscar Wilde
It's most dangerous nowadays for a husband to pay any attention to his wife in public. It always makes people think that he beats her when they are alone. The world has grown so suspicious of anything that looks like a happy married life. -- Oscar Wilde
I am afraid it is quite clear, Cecily, that neither of us is engaged to be married to any one. -- Oscar Wilde
The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her latest wonder. -- Oscar Wilde
I have promised to dine at White's, but it is only with an old friend, so I can send him a wire to say that I am ill, or that I am prevented from coming in consequence of a subsequent engagement. I think that would be a rather nice excuse: it would have all the surprise of candour. -- Oscar Wilde
He is fairer than the morning star, and whiter than the moon. For his body I would give my soul, and for his love I would surrender heaven. -- Oscar Wilde
Cultivated leisure is the aim of man. -- Oscar Wilde
Yes, there is a terrible moral in 'Dorian Gray' - a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book. -- Oscar Wilde
There is only one real tragedy in a woman's life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future invariably her husband. -- Oscar Wilde
The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray. -- Oscar Wilde
My friend is not allowed to go out today. I sit by his side and read him passages from his own life. They fill him with surprise. Everyone should keep someone else's diary; I sometimes suspect you of keeping mine. -- Oscar Wilde
When I had to fill in my immigration papers, I gave my age as 19, and my profession as genius; I added that I had nothing to declare except my talent. -- Oscar Wilde
When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself. -- Oscar Wilde
Nay, without thought or conscious desire, might not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and passions, atom calling to atom in secret love or strange affinity? -- Oscar Wilde
Was there some subtle affinity between the chemical atoms that shaped themselves into form and colour on the canvas and the soul that was within him? Could it be that what that soul thought, they realized? -- that what it dreamed, they made true? -- Oscar Wilde
During the three terrible hours that the play had lasted, he had lived centuries of pain, aeon upon aeon of torture. His -- Oscar Wilde
Come, I tell you. You have chattered enough about corruption. Now you shall look on it face to face! -- Oscar Wilde
It is mentally and morally injurious to man to do anything in which he does not find pleasure, and many forms of labour are quite pleasureless activities, and should be regarded as such. -- Oscar Wilde
My philosophy? I'm always right and you are wrong. -- Oscar Wilde
Bitter, bitter was the pain, and wilder and wilder grew her song, for she sang of the Love that is perfected by Death, of the Love that dies not in the tomb. -- Oscar Wilde
Create yourself. Be yourself your poem. -- Oscar Wilde
If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized. -- Oscar Wilde
Behind the barricade there may be much that is noble and heroic. But what is there behind the leading-article but prejudice, stupidity, cant, and twaddle? And when these four are joined together they make a terrible force, and constitute the new authority. -- Oscar Wilde
The whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people. -- Oscar Wilde
You have filled my tea with lumps of sugar, and though I asked most distinctly for bread and butter, you have given me cake. I am known for the gentleness of my disposition, and the extraordinary sweetness of my nature, but I warn you, Miss Cardew, you may go too far. -- Oscar Wilde
Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable. -- Oscar Wilde
If you are not long, I will wait for you all my life. -- Oscar Wilde
From your silken hair to your delicate feet you are perfection to me. Pleasure hides love from us, but pain reveals it in its essence. -- Oscar Wilde
You and I will always be friends."
"Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. -- Oscar Wilde
you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to any one. It does harm. -- Oscar Wilde
The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world. -- Oscar Wilde
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship. -- Oscar Wilde
His principles were out of date, but there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices. -- Oscar Wilde
Marco Polo had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rose-colored pearls in the mouths of the dead. A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over its loss. -- Oscar Wilde
Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it. -- Oscar Wilde
I analyzed you, though you did not adore me. -- Oscar Wilde
To-night, for the first time in my life, I saw through the hollowness, the sham, the silliness of the empty pageant in which I had always played. To-night, -- Oscar Wilde
The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is. -- Oscar Wilde
I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. -- Oscar Wilde
Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither -- Oscar Wilde
If a woman cannot make her mistakes charming, she is only a female. -- Oscar Wilde
You can't possibly ask me to go without having some dinner. It's absurd. I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that. -- Oscar Wilde
We shall be notes in that great Symphony
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,
And all the live World's throbbing heart shall be
Once with our heart -- Oscar Wilde
I know he likes me. Of course I flatter him dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said. -- Oscar Wilde
Even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less then Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable. -- Oscar Wilde
Dammit Sir, it's your duty to get married. You can't always be living for pleasure! -- Oscar Wilde
To shut one's eyes to half of life that one may live securely is as though one blinded oneself that one might walk with more safety in a land of pit and precipice. -- Oscar Wilde
One knows so well the popular idea of health: the English country gentleman galloping after a fox - the unspeakable in full pursuit of the unbeatable. -- Oscar Wilde
I was wrong. God's law is only Love. -- Oscar Wilde
Skepticism is the beginning of faith. -- Oscar Wilde
The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable. -- Oscar Wilde
A man who moralizes is a hypocrite, and a woman who does so is invariably plain. -- Oscar Wilde
It is a marvel that those red-roseleaf lips of yours should be made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing. -- Oscar Wilde
That awful memory of woman! What a fearful thing it is! And what an utter intellectual stagnation it reveals! -- Oscar Wilde
The Americans are an extremely interesting people. They are absolutely reasonable. I think that is their distinguishing characteristic ... I assure you there is no nonsense about the Americans. -- Oscar Wilde
An actor is part illusionist, part artist, part ham. -- Oscar Wilde
I must say ... that I ruined myself: and that nobody, great or small, can be ruined except by his own hand. -- Oscar Wilde
I wish I had, for as sure as there is a God in heaven, if he ever does you any wrong, I shall kill him. -- Oscar Wilde
The harmony of soul and body - how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, and ideality that is void. -- Oscar Wilde
Biography lends to death a new terror. -- Oscar Wilde
Newspapers have degenerated. They may now be absolutely relied upon. -- Oscar Wilde
Lady Bracknell: He was eccentric, I admit. But only in later years. And that was the result of the Indian climate, and marriage, and indigestion, and other things of that kind. -- Oscar Wilde
Never met such a Gorgon ... I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair. -- Oscar Wilde
LADY BRACKNELL
Algernon is an extremely, I may almost say an ostentatiously, eligible young man. He has nothing, but he looks everything. What more can one desire? -- Oscar Wilde
LADY BRACKNELL
To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable. -- Oscar Wilde
Do you smoke? Jack. Well, yes, I must admit I smoke. Lady Bracknell. I am glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind. There are far too many idle men in London as it is. -- Oscar Wilde
Lady Bracknell: Is this Miss Prism a female of repellent aspect, remotely connected with education?
Chasuble: (Somewhat indignantly) She is the most cultivated of ladies, and the very picture of respectability.
Lady Bracknell: It is obviously the same person. -- Oscar Wilde
Jack: Actually, I was found. Lady Bracknell: Found? Jack: Uh, yes, I was in ... a handbag. Lady Bracknell: A handbag? Jack: Yes, it was ... [makes gestures] Jack: an ordinary handbag. -- Oscar Wilde
Lady Bracknell, I hate to seem inquisitive, but would you kindly inform me who I am? -- Oscar Wilde
LADY BRACKNELL
I had some crumpets with Lady Harbury, who seems to me to be living entirely for pleasure now.
ALGERNON
I hear her hair has turned quite gold from grief. -- Oscar Wilde
LADY BRACKNELL. [Rising and drawing herself up.] You must be quite aware that what you propose is out of the question. JACK. Then a passionate celibacy is all that any of us can look forward to. -- Oscar Wilde
LADY BRACKNELL: It is my last reception, and one wants something that will encourage conversation, particularly at the end of the season when every one has practically said whatever they had to say, which, in most cases, was probably not much. -- Oscar Wilde
The best one can say of modern creative art is that it is just a little less vulgar than reality. -- Oscar Wilde
You came to me to learn the Pleasure of Life and the Pleasure of Art. Perhaps I am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful, the meaning of Sorrow and its beauty. -- Oscar Wilde
A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between Art and Nature. -- Oscar Wilde
That beauty which is meant by art is no mere accident of human life which people can take or leave, but a positive necessity of life if we are to live as nature meant us to, that is to say unless we are content to be less than men. -- Oscar Wilde
The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition. -- Oscar Wilde
Wishing to make an effective entrance, he flung it wide open, when a heavy jug of water fell right down on him, wetting him to the skin, and just missing his left shoulder by a couple of inches. At the same moment he heard stifled shrieks of laughter proceeding from the four-post bed. -- Oscar Wilde
I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world. -- Oscar Wilde
It is very difficult sometimes to keep awake, especially at church, but there is no difficulty at all about sleeping. -- Oscar Wilde
Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain. -- Oscar Wilde
I forgot that little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has someday to cry aloud on the housetops. -- Oscar Wilde
Like dear St. Francis of Assisi I am wedded to Poverty: but in my case the marriage is not a success. -- Oscar Wilde
Nowadays, saying what you really think can be a serious error since one risks being misunderstood. -- Oscar Wilde
I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood. -- Oscar Wilde
He is fond of being misunderstood. It gives him a post of vantage. -- Oscar Wilde
I live constantly in the fear of not being misunderstood. -- Oscar Wilde
You are more to me than any of them has any idea; you are the atmosphere of beauty through which I see life; you are the incarnation of all lovely things...I think of you day and night. ~ Letter to Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas -- Oscar Wilde
At least,
I have not made my heart a heart of stone,
Nor starved my boyhood of is goodly feast,
Nor walked where beauty is a thing unknown. -- Oscar Wilde
Oh, when I think that I made of a man like you my ideal! the ideal of my life!
There was your mistake. There was your error. The error all women commit. Why can't you women love us, faults and all? -- Oscar Wilde
Hard work is amply the refuge of those who have nothing to do. -- Oscar Wilde
I would sooner lose my best friend than my worst enemy. To have friends, you know, one need only be good-natured; but when a man has no enemy left there must be something mean about him. -- Oscar Wilde
An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship. It starts in the right manner. -- Oscar Wilde
I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy. -- Oscar Wilde
It takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it. And even more courage to see it in the one you love -- Oscar Wilde
You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear. -- Oscar Wilde
It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would destroy it. -- Oscar Wilde
I am sorry my life is so marred and maimed by extravagance. But I cannot live otherwise. I, at any rate, pay the penalty of suffering. -- Oscar Wilde
All imitation in morals and in life is wrong. Through the streets of Jerusalem at the present day crawls one who is mad and carries a wooden cross on his shoulders. He is a symbol of the lives that are marred by imitation. -- Oscar Wilde
You have crushed the grapes against your palate. Nothing has been hidden from you. And it has all been to you no more than the sound of music. It has not marred you. -- Oscar Wilde
She had marred him for a moment, if he had wounded her for an age. -- Oscar Wilde
Waning. He was perfectly safe there. Nor, indeed, was it the death of Basil Hallward that weighed most upon his mind. It was the living death of his own soul that troubled him. Basil had painted the portrait that had marred his life. -- Oscar Wilde
was the living death of his own soul that troubled him. Basil had painted the portrait that had marred his -- Oscar Wilde
Shakespeare might have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the white streets of London, or seen the serving-men of rival houses bite their thumbs at each other in the open square; but Hamlet came out of his soul, and Romeo out of his passion. -- Oscar Wilde
do they not tell us more of the real spirit of the Italian Renaissance, of the dream of Savonarola and of the sin of Borgia, than all the brawling boors and cooking women of Dutch art can teach us of the real spirit of the history of Holland? -- Oscar Wilde
A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses. -- Oscar Wilde
Love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds and dearer than fine opals. pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the market-place. It may not be purchased of the merchants, nor can it be weighted out in the balance for gold. -- Oscar Wilde
The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving. -- Oscar Wilde
In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. -- Oscar Wilde
The secret to life is to enjoy the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived. -- Oscar Wilde
If this is the way Queen Victoria treats her prisoners, she doesn't deserve to have any. -- Oscar Wilde
When the prurient and the impotent attack you, be sure you are right. -- Oscar Wilde
The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. -- Oscar Wilde
Immanuel isn't a pun; he Kant be! -- Oscar Wilde
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. -- Oscar Wilde
Dry-goods! What are American dry-goods?" asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb. "American novels," answered Lord Henry, helping himself to some quail. -- Oscar Wilde
But Lady Brandon treats her guests exactly as an auctioneer treats his goods. -- Oscar Wilde
Beauty ... is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon. -- Oscar Wilde
Art is rarely intelligible to the criminal classes. -- Oscar Wilde
It lies like a leper in purple, it sits like a dead thing smeared with gold. -- Oscar Wilde
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. -- Oscar Wilde
It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place -- Oscar Wilde
Really, if the lower orders don't set a good example, what on earth is the use of them? -- Oscar Wilde
Live the wonderful life that is in you. -- Oscar Wilde
I dare say that if I knew him I should not be his friend at all. It is a very dangerous thing to know one's friends. -- Oscar Wilde
Of course married life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then one regrets the loss even of one's worse habits. -- Oscar Wilde
You talk books away," he said; "why don't you write one?" "I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. I should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian carpet and as unreal. -- Oscar Wilde
You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit. -- Oscar Wilde
When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me. Indeed, as any one who knows me intimately will tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink. At the present moment I am eating muffins because I am unhappy. Besides, I am particularly fond of muffins. -- Oscar Wilde
As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. -- Oscar Wilde
Besides, if Hans came here, he might ask me to let him have some flour on credit, and that I could not do. Flour is one thing, and friendship is another, and they should not be confused. Why, the words are spelled differently, and mean quite different things. Everyone can see that. -- Oscar Wilde
America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up. -- Oscar Wilde
Our husbands would really forget our existence if we didn't nag at them from time to time, just to remind them that we have a perfect legal right to do so. -- Oscar Wilde
With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols of things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. -- Oscar Wilde
Nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion. -- Oscar Wilde
Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard
Some do it with a bitter look
Some with a flattering word
The coward does it with a kiss
The brave man with a sword -- Oscar Wilde
Science is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon eternal truths. Art is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon things beautiful and immortal and ever-changing. -- Oscar Wilde
What a silly thing love is! It is not half as useful as logic, for it does not prove anything and it is always telling one things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true. -- Oscar Wilde
For nearly twenty minutes, neither of the men spoke. A fly buzzed noisily about the room, and the ticking of the clock was like the beat of a hammer. -- Oscar Wilde
Palermo was lovely. The most beautifully situated town in the world - it dreams away its life in the Conca d'Oro, the exquisite valley that lies between two seas. The lemon groves and the orange gardens were entirely perfect. -- Oscar Wilde
There are only two ways, as you know, of becoming civilized. One is by being cultured, the other is by being corrupt. -- Oscar Wilde
He was trying to gather up the scarlet threads of life and weave them into a pattern; to find his way through the sanguine labyrinth of passion through which he was wandering. -- Oscar Wilde
Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. -- Oscar Wilde
There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up. -- Oscar Wilde
Now and then it is a joy to have one's table red with wine and roses. -- Oscar Wilde
She said that she would dance with me if I brought her red roses," cried the young Student; "but in all my garden there is no red rose. -- Oscar Wilde
With beat of systole and of diastole One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart, And mighty waves of single Being roll From nerveless germ to man, for we are part Of every rock and bird and beast and hill, One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill. From -- Oscar Wilde
And does his philosophy make you happy?" "I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have searched for pleasure." "And found it, Mr. Gray?" "Often. Too often." The duchess sighed. "I am searching for peace," she -- Oscar Wilde
past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen. They always want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over, they propose to continue it. -- Oscar Wilde
The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain. -- Oscar Wilde
Plain women are always jealous of their husbands. Beautiful women never are. They are always so occupied with being jealous of other women's husbands. -- Oscar Wilde
Of course I have played outdoor games. I once played dominoes in an open air cafe in Paris. -- Oscar Wilde
A beggar hates his benefactor as much as he hates himself for begging. -- Oscar Wilde
We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities. -- Oscar Wilde
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. -- Oscar Wilde
Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority. -- Oscar Wilde
A misanthrope I can understand - a womanthrope, never! -- Oscar Wilde
Suddenly a dog bayed in the wood, and the dancers stopped, and going up two by two, knelt down, and kissed the man's hands. As they did so, a little smile touched his proud lips, as a bird's wing touches the water and makes it laugh. But there was disdain in it. -- Oscar Wilde
Death is the brother of Sleep, is he not? -- Oscar Wilde
Frank Harris has no feelings. It is the secret of his success. Just as the fact that he thinks that other people have none either is the secret of the failure that lies in wait for him somewhere on the way of Life. -- Oscar Wilde
I adore simple pleasures," said Lord Henry. "They are the last refuge of the complex. But I don't like scenes, except on the stage. -- Oscar Wilde
The domestic virtues are often very beautiful in others. -- Oscar Wilde
But the picture? What was he to say of that? It held the secret of his life, and told his story. It had taught him to love his own beauty. Would it teach him to loathe his own soul? Would he ever look at it again? -- Oscar Wilde
This young Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. -- Oscar Wilde
It is always painful to part from people whom one has known for a brief space of time. The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity, But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable. -- Oscar Wilde
The ages live in history through their anachronisms. -- Oscar Wilde
No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true. -- Oscar Wilde
We women, as some one says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes ... -- Oscar Wilde
An opinion is not necesarily correct just because you're willing to die for it. -- Oscar Wilde
We live in the age of the overworked and the undereducated. -- Oscar Wilde
Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets. -- Oscar Wilde
As he looked back upon man moving through History, he was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had been surrendered! and to such little purpose! ... Hedonism ... was to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is but itself a moment. -- Oscar Wilde
Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed." "I don't think I am likely to marry, Harry. I am too much in love. That is one of your aphorisms. I am putting it into practice, as I do everything that you say. -- Oscar Wilde
Absolute catholicity of taste is not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art. -- Oscar Wilde
Greek dress was in its essence inartistic. Nothing should reveal the body but the body. -- Oscar Wilde
Friendship never forgets. That is the wonderful thing about it. -- Oscar Wilde
A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks. -- Oscar Wilde
You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter - a girl brought up with the utmost care - to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel? -- Oscar Wilde
In art, the public accept what has been, because they cannot alter it, not because they appreciate it. They swallow their classics whole, and never taste them. -- Oscar Wilde
One sometime feels that it is only with a front of brass and a lip of scorn that one can get through the day at all. -- Oscar Wilde
To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders ... It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. -- Oscar Wilde
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not. -- Oscar Wilde
I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself, -- Oscar Wilde
Inside, in the servants' part of the house, the half-clad domestics were talking in low whispers to each other. Old Mrs. Leaf was crying and wringing -- Oscar Wilde
What you really are is a Bunburyist. I was quite right in saying you were a Bunburyist. You are one of the most advanced Bunburyists I know. -- Oscar Wilde
Nature, which makes nothing durable, always repeats itself so that nothing which it makes may be lost. -- Oscar Wilde
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic. -- Oscar Wilde
Industry is the root of all ugliness. -- Oscar Wilde
Moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a feast. -- Oscar Wilde
Intellectual criticism will bind Europe together in bonds far closer than those that can be forged by shopman or sentimentalists. It will give us the peace that springs from understanding. -- Oscar Wilde
Oh, I'm neither. Optimism begins in a broad grin, and Pessimism ends with blue spectacles. Besides, they are both of them merely poses. -- Oscar Wilde
If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life. -- Oscar Wilde
If you are not too long, I will wait for you all my life. -- Oscar Wilde
To be entirely free, and at the same time entirely dominated by law, is the eternal paradox of human life. -- Oscar Wilde
The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself. -- Oscar Wilde
A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public are to him non-existent -- Oscar Wilde
It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for. But for those two things, his life might have been free from stain. His beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery. -- Oscar Wilde
He did not wring his hands, as do
Those witless men who dare
To try to rear the changeling Hope
In the cave of black Despair. -- Oscar Wilde
Truth in art is the unity of a thing with itself: the outward rendered expressive of the inward: the soul made incarnate: the body instinct with spirit. For this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow. -- Oscar Wilde
Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away. -- Oscar Wilde
They have been through the fire, and what fire does not destroy, it hardens. She has had experiences. -- Oscar Wilde
There seemed to him to be something tragic in a friendship so colored by romance. -- Oscar Wilde
Second time you have made that observation. If one puts forward an idea to a true Englishman
always a rash thing to do
he never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong. The only thing -- Oscar Wilde
It was you I thought of all the time, I gave to them the love you did not need: lavished on them a love that was not theirs. -- Oscar Wilde
Many people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honor. -- Oscar Wilde
Spontaneity is a meticulously prepared art -- Oscar Wilde
Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear. -- Oscar Wilde
When a man does exactly what a woman expects him to do she doesn't think much of him. One should always do what a woman doesn't expect, just as one should say what she doesn't understand. -- Oscar Wilde
JACK: Yes, but said yourself that a severe chill was not hereditary.
ALGERNON: It usen't to be, I know - but I daresay it is now. Science is always making wonderful improvements in things. -- Oscar Wilde
Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid. -- Oscar Wilde
A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it. -- Oscar Wilde
Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature. -- Oscar Wilde
Married men are horribly tedious when they are good husbands and abominably conceited when they are not. -- Oscar Wilde
Extravagance is the luxury of the poor; penury is the luxury of the rich. -- Oscar Wilde
We have quite the same ideas. No; I think our ideas are quite different. But he has been most pleasant. -- Oscar Wilde
As for modern journalism, it is not my business to defend it. It justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest. -- Oscar Wilde
Life is too short to learn German -- Oscar Wilde
Thou art the same: 'tis I whose wretched soul Takes discontent to be its paramour, And gives its kingdom to the rude control Of what should be its servitor, - for sure Wisdom is somewhere, though the stormy sea Contain it not, and the huge deep answer 'Tis not in me.' To -- Oscar Wilde
While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance. -- Oscar Wilde
To know anything about oneself one must know all about others. -- Oscar Wilde
Dorian's whims are laws to everybody, except himself. -- Oscar Wilde
Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both. -- Oscar Wilde
Now produce your explanation and pray make it improbable. -- Oscar Wilde
The aim of Love is to love: no more, and no less. -- Oscar Wilde
Even things that are true can be proved. -- Oscar Wilde
We are talking about poor Dartmoor, Lord Henry, cried the duchess, nodding pleasantly -- Oscar Wilde
No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone. -- Oscar Wilde
If art is to have a special train, the critic must keep some seats reserved on it. -- Oscar Wilde
Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. -- Oscar Wilde
Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. -- Oscar Wilde
I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. -- Oscar Wilde
The importance of being earnest, -- Oscar Wilde
If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even. Somebody--I -- Oscar Wilde
love is not safe -- Oscar Wilde
You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. -- Oscar Wilde
I beseech thee, for their days are as the days of flowers. And as for my soul, what doth my soul profit me, if it stand between me and the thing that I love? -- Oscar Wilde
Only mediocrities progress. An artist revolves in a cycle of masterpieces, the first of which is no less perfect than the last. -- Oscar Wilde
But I think it will bring you something besides this, something that is the knowledge of real strength in art: not that you should imitate the works of these men; but their artistic spirit, their artistic attitude, I think you should absorb that. -- Oscar Wilde
Down the long and silent street,
The dawn, with silver-sandaled feet,
Crept like a frightened girl. -- Oscar Wilde
At every single moment of one's life one is what one is going to be no less than what one has been. -- Oscar Wilde
I could deny myself the pleasure of talking, but not to others the pleasure of listening. -- Oscar Wilde
paused for a moment, and a wild feeling of pity came over him. After all, what right had he to pry into the life of Dorian Gray? If he had done a tithe of what was rumoured about him, how much he must have suffered! Then he straightened himself up, and walked over to the fire-place, and stood there, -- Oscar Wilde
You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of life, of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing. -- Oscar Wilde
Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious. -- Oscar Wilde
It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes. -- Oscar Wilde
It is curious how vanity helps the successful man and wrecks the failure. -- Oscar Wilde
Surely Love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the marketplace. It may not be purchased of the merchants, for can it be weighed out in the balance for gold. -- Oscar Wilde
I have pleasures, and passions, but the joy of life is gone. I am going under: the morgue yawns for me. I go and look at my zinc-bed there. After all, I had a wonderful life, which is, I fear, over. -- Oscar Wilde
The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value. -- Oscar Wilde
She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions. -- Oscar Wilde
She was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions. She tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy. -- Oscar Wilde
Millionaire models are rare enough; but, by Jove, model millionaires are rarer still! -- Oscar Wilde
There are moments when art attains almost to the dignity of manual labor. -- Oscar Wilde
Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility. -- Oscar Wilde
The secret seems to be the only way to become mysterious and wonderful modern life. The commonest thing gets a touch fascinating when done on the sly. -- Oscar Wilde
And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not? And I don't like that. It makes men so very attractive. -- Oscar Wilde
Be happy, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart's-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty. -- Oscar Wilde
Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualification. -- Oscar Wilde
It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest. -- Oscar Wilde
The sin was mine; I did not understand. So now is music prisoned in her cave, Save where some ebbing desultory wave Frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand ... -- Oscar Wilde
The only difference between saints and sinners is that every saint has a past while every sinner has a future. -- Oscar Wilde
There is no feeling more comforting and consoling than knowing you are right next to the one you love. -- Oscar Wilde
The visible aspect of modern life disturbs him not; rather is it for him to render eternal all that is beautiful in Greek, Italian, and Celtic legend. -- Oscar Wilde
The Americans are identical to the British in all respects except, of course, language. -- Oscar Wilde
It was conscious of the events of life as they occurred. -- Oscar Wilde
The ugly can be beautiful. The pretty, never. -- Oscar Wilde
Come, dear, [Gwendolen rises] we have already missed five, if not six, trains. To miss any more might expose us to comment on the platform. -- Oscar Wilde
Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all. -- Oscar Wilde
She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm. -- Oscar Wilde
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it -- Oscar Wilde
I hope to-morrow will be a fine day, Lane.
It never is, sir.
Lane, you're a perfect pessimist.
I do my best to give satisfaction, sir. -- Oscar Wilde
Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won't expect it back. -- Oscar Wilde
Every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every human being should be the realisation of some ideal, either in the mind of God or in the mind of man. -- Oscar Wilde
And to the little Squirrel who lived in the fir-tree, and was lonely, he said, 'Where is my mother?' And the Squirrel answered, 'Thou hast slain mine. Dost thou seek to slay thine also? -- Oscar Wilde
I would sooner say, or hear it said of me, that I was so typical a child of my age, that in my perversity, and for that perversity's sake, I turned the good things of my life to evil, and the evil things of my life to good. -- Oscar Wilde
I shall show you my soul. You shall see the thing that you fancy only God can see. -- Oscar Wilde
True friends stab you in the front -- Oscar Wilde
No art ever survived censorship; no art ever will. -- Oscar Wilde
You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. living, as you all do, on other and by them, you need at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season. -- Oscar Wilde
I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there. -- Oscar Wilde
Art persists, it timelessly continues. -- Oscar Wilde
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be. -- Oscar Wilde
From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it. -- Oscar Wilde
As a wicked man I am a complete failure. Why, there are lots of people who say I have never really done anything wrong in the whole course of my life. Of course they only say it behind my back. -- Oscar Wilde
A grapefruit is just a lemon that saw an opportunity and took advantage of it. -- Oscar Wilde
The real weakness of England lies, not in incomplete armaments or unfortified coasts, not in the poverty that creeps through sunless lanes, or the drunkenness that brawls in loathsome courts, but simply in the fact that her ideals are emotional and not intellectual. -- Oscar Wilde
When he takes the knife to the canvass the servants find him lying dead with a knife through is heart and "withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage." and the portrait "in all the wonders of his exquisite youth and beauty." p 349 -- Oscar Wilde
What is said of man is nothing; the point is, who says it. -- Oscar Wilde
America is one long expectoration. -- Oscar Wilde
Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given away. The ruby shall be redder than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as the great sea. -- Oscar Wilde
The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream. -- Oscar Wilde
But this murder
was it to dog him all his life? Was he always to be burdened by his past? Was he really -- Oscar Wilde
Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable. -- Oscar Wilde
Everyone quoted it, it was full of so many words that they could not understand. -- Oscar Wilde
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. -- Oscar Wilde
Prism! Where is that baby? -- Oscar Wilde
If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first. -- Oscar Wilde
We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality. -- Oscar Wilde
MRS. ALLONBY. Curious thing, plain women are always jealous of their husbands, beautiful women never are!
LORD ILLINGWORTH. Beautiful women never have time. They are always so occupied in being jealous of other people's husbands. -- Oscar Wilde
And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. -- Oscar Wilde
All love is true, but not all truth ... is love? -- Oscar Wilde
It is very vulgar to talk about one's own business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then only at dinner parties. -- Oscar Wilde
Nature is always behind the age -- Oscar Wilde
What consoles one nowadays is not repentance but pleasure. Repentance is quite out of date. -- Oscar Wilde
LORD GORING: ... All I do know is that life cannot be understood without much charity, cannot be lived without much charity. It is love, and not German philosophy, that is the true explanation of this world, whatever may. -- Oscar Wilde
I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules. -- Oscar Wilde
Behind Joy and Laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind Sorrow there is always Sorrow. Pain, unlike Pleasure, wears no mask. -- Oscar Wilde
The hand upon his shoulder weighed like a hand of lead. It was intolerable. It seemed to crush him. -- Oscar Wilde
You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream. -- Oscar Wilde
Pleasures may turn a heart to stone, riches may make it callous, but sorrows cannot break it. Hearts live by being wounded. -- Oscar Wilde
Hearts Live By Being Wounded -- Oscar Wilde
We spend our days, each one of us, in looking for the secret of life. Well, the secret of life is in art. -- Oscar Wilde
So the swallow flew over the great city, and saw the rich making merry in their beautiful houses, while the beggars were sitting at the gates. He flew into dark lanes, and saw the white faces of starving children looking out listlessly at the black streets ... -- Oscar Wilde
I was on the point of explaining to Gerald that the world has always laughed at its own tragedies, that being the only way in which it has been able to bear them. And that, consequently, whatever the world has treated seriously belongs to the comedy side of things. -- Oscar Wilde
I am very pleased you like my stories. They are studies in prose, put for Romance's sake into fanciful form: meant partly for children, and partly for those who have kept the childlike faculties of wonder and joy, and who find simplicity in a subtle strangeness. -- Oscar Wilde
When I was young, I was no one. Now, I'm worldwilde. -- Oscar Wilde
The best revenge is to live well. -- Oscar Wilde
All I want now is to look at life. -- Oscar Wilde
Education is an admirable thing. -- Oscar Wilde
Clergymen and people who use phrases without wisdom sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation. -- Oscar Wilde
Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt. -- Oscar Wilde
I am afraid that women appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more than anything else. They have wonderfully primitive instincts. We have emancipated them, but they remain slaves looking for their masters, all the same. They love being dominated. I -- Oscar Wilde
He read of the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde that weeps tears of granite in its lonely sunless exile and longs to be back by the hot, lotus-covered Nile. -- Oscar Wilde
He must have a truly romantic nature, for he weeps when there is nothing at all to weep about. -- Oscar Wilde
What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. they would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always alive. (Dorian Gray regarding his portrait) -- Oscar Wilde
Inteligence lives longer than beauty. -- Oscar Wilde
Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of physical weakness in the old. -- Oscar Wilde
Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity. -- Oscar Wilde
The final mystery is oneself. -- Oscar Wilde
What a fuss people make about fidelity!" exclaimed Lord Henry. "Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say. -- Oscar Wilde
Cecily is the sweetest, dearest, prettiest girl in the whole world. And I don't care twopence about social possibilities. -- Oscar Wilde
I have a dining room done in different shades of white, with white cushions embroidered in yellow silk: the effect is absolutely delightful and the room beautiful. -- Oscar Wilde
He atones for being occasionally somewhat overdressed by being always absolutely over-educated. He is a very modern type. -- Oscar Wilde
Lawyers have been known to wrest from reluctant juries triumphant verdicts of acquittal for their clients, even when those clients, as often happens, were clearly and unmistakably innocent. -- Oscar Wilde
Indeed, so far from being humorous, the male American is the most abnormally serious creature who ever existed.. It is only fair to admit that he can exaggerate, but even his exaggeration has a rational basis. It is not founded on wit or fancy; it does not spring from any poetic imagination. -- Oscar Wilde
The vulgar directness of the question called for a direct answer. -- Oscar Wilde
If God really wanted to punish, he'd answer all our prayers. -- Oscar Wilde
I don't call women of that kind clever. I call them stupid!
Same thing often. -- Oscar Wilde
MRS ALLONBY I adore them. The clever people never listen, and the stupid people never talk.
HESTER I think the stupid people talk a great deal.
MRS ALLONBY Ah, I never listen! -- Oscar Wilde
To be in love is to surpass one's self. -- Oscar Wilde
In one dancing saloon I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across. Over the piano was printed a notice: 'Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.' -- Oscar Wilde
As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg -- Oscar Wilde
He is some brainless, beautiful creature, who should always be here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in the summer when we want something to chill our intelligence. -- Oscar Wilde
I envy you going to Oxford: it is the most flower-like time of one's life. One sees the shadow of things in silver mirrors. Later on, one sees the Gorgon's head, and one suffers, because it does not turn one to stone. -- Oscar Wilde
Tread Lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow. -- Oscar Wilde
What between the duties expected of one during one's lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one's death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up. That's all that can be said about land. -- Oscar Wilde
A method of procuring sensations? Do you think then, that a man who has once committed a murder could possibly do the same crime again? Don't tell me that." says Dorian.
"Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often," says Lord Henry -- Oscar Wilde
Don't feed the trolls; nothing fuels them so much. -- Oscar Wilde
I did not want any external influence in my life. You know how independent I am by nature. I have always been my own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray. -- Oscar Wilde
The best people to work for are me, myself and I. -- Oscar Wilde
Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else. -- Oscar Wilde
The world seemed to me fine because you were in it, and goodness more real because you lived. -- Oscar Wilde
The man who says his wife can't take a joke, forgets that she took him. -- Oscar Wilde
Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing. -- Oscar Wilde
Artists, like the Greek gods, are only revealed to one another. -- Oscar Wilde
Sometime you will find, even as I have found, that there is no such thing as romantic experience; there are romantic memories, and there is the desire of romance- that is all. Our most fiery moments of ecstasy are merely shadows of what somewhere else we have felt, or of what we long someday to feel -- Oscar Wilde
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. -- Oscar Wilde
He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul. -- Oscar Wilde
The best work in literature is always done by those who do not depend upon it for their daily bread, and the highest form of literature, poetry, brings no wealth to the singer. For producing your best work also you will require some leisure and freedom from sordid care. -- Oscar Wilde
In fact, he was dressed for the character of 'Jonas the Graveless, or the Corpse-Snatcher of Chertsey Barn,' one of his most remarkable impersonations -- Oscar Wilde
No one wants to see a play called 'Lady Windermere's Fan'. It's going to be called 'Cocks in Frocks II' or I will find another publisher -- Oscar Wilde
Religion?" "The fashionable substitute for belief. -- Oscar Wilde
Her ivory hands on the ivory keys
Strayed in a fitful fantasy,
Like the silver gleam when the poplar trees
Rustle their pale leaves listlessly,
Or the drifting foam of a restless sea
When the waves show their teeth in the flying breeze. -- Oscar Wilde
Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to. -- Oscar Wilde
Yes, very sensible ... People die of common sense, Dorian, one lost moment at a time. Life is a moment. There is no hereafter. So make it burn always with the hardest flame. -- Oscar Wilde
I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything. -- Oscar Wilde
Whenever cannibals are on the brink of starvation, Heaven, in its infinite mercy, sends them a fat missionary. -- Oscar Wilde
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. -- Oscar Wilde
Just as the orator marks his good things by a dramatic pause, or by raising and lowering his voice, or by gesture, so the writer marks his epigrams with italics, setting the little gem, so to speak, like a jeweler. -- Oscar Wilde
The only thing I have to declare is my genius. -- Oscar Wilde
The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn. -- Oscar Wilde
Psychology is in its infancy, as a science. I hope, in the interests of Art, it will always remain so. -- Oscar Wilde
I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope. -- Oscar Wilde
A man who pays his bills on time is soon forgotten. -- Oscar Wilde
The drawback of stealing a thing, is that one never knows how wonderful the thing that one steals is. -- Oscar Wilde
Some subtle influence passed from him to me, and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the wonder I had always looked for, and always missed. -- Oscar Wilde
The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure. -- Oscar Wilde
I can believe anything provided it is incredible. -- Oscar Wilde
I can resist everything except temptation. -- Oscar Wilde
The only thing I can't resist is temptation. -- Oscar Wilde
I can resist anything but temptation. -- Oscar Wilde
I can resist anything but the temptation to make a clever witticism. -- Oscar Wilde
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it ... I can resist everything but temptation. -- Oscar Wilde
One cannot always keep an adder in one's breast to feed one, nor rise up every night to sow thorns in the garden of one's soul. -- Oscar Wilde
He was afraid of certainty. -- Oscar Wilde
Ah! it is so easy to convert others. It is so difficult to convert oneself. To arrive at what one really believes, one must speak through lips different from one's own. To know the truth one must imagine myriads of falsehoods. -- Oscar Wilde
Women's styles may change but their designs remain the same. -- Oscar Wilde
The problem with the common person is that he is so unbearably common! -- Oscar Wilde
Were there no law there'd be no law-breakers, So all men would be virtuous. -- Oscar Wilde
Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success. -- Oscar Wilde
One should always be a little improbable. -- Oscar Wilde
Lord AUGUSTUS:(looking around) Time to educate yourself, I suppose.
DUMBY: No, time to forget all I have learned. That is much more important. -- Oscar Wilde
Even if I had not been waiting but had shut the doors against you, you should have remembered that no one can possibly shut the doors against love forever. -- Oscar Wilde
Only England could have produced him, and he always said that the country was going to the dogs. -- Oscar Wilde
My father told me to go to bed an hour ago. I don't see why I shouldn't give you the same advice. I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of ant use to oneself. -- Oscar Wilde
He loves first editions, especially of women: little girls are his passion. -- Oscar Wilde
table. He could not help seeing the dead thing. How still it was! How horribly white the long hands looked! It was like a dreadful wax image. -- Oscar Wilde
I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly. -- Oscar Wilde
The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one's heart - hearts are made to be broken - but that it turns one's heart to stone. -- Oscar Wilde
One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing. -- Oscar Wilde
Most personalities have been obliged to be rebels. Half their strength has been wasted in friction. -- Oscar Wilde
Could we dig up this long-buried treasure, Were it worth the pleasure, We never could learn love's song, We are parted too long. Could the passionate past that is fled Call back its dead, Could we live it all over again, Were it worth the pain! -- Oscar Wilde
If music be the food of love, get me a supersized big mac, chips, two apple pies and a large milkshake. -- Oscar Wilde
It is sweet to dance to violins
When love and life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
Is delicate and rare:
But it is not sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air! -- Oscar Wilde
The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it. -- Oscar Wilde
Just to let you know that the buffet car will be closing for stocktaking in five minutes. The next station stop is Chesterfield. -- Oscar Wilde
People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. -- Oscar Wilde
The Governor was strong upon
The Regulation Act:
The Doctor said that Death was but
A scientific fact:
And twice a day the Chaplain called,
And left a little tract. -- Oscar Wilde
Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be invited to cocktail parties. -- Oscar Wilde
Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you'll never be invited to a party. -- Oscar Wilde
Dear little Swallow,' said the Prince, 'you tell me of marvelous things, but more marvelous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery. -- Oscar Wilde
I would not a bit mind sleeping in the cool grass in summer, and when winter came on sheltering myself by the warm close-thatched rick, or under the penthouse of a great barn, provided I had love in my heart. -- Oscar Wilde
A mask tells us more than a face. -- Oscar Wilde
One should never take sides in anything, Mr. Kelvil. Taking sides is the beginning of sincerity, and earnestness follows shortly afterwards, and the human being becomes a bore. -- Oscar Wilde
Oh, I don't care about Jack. I don't care for anybody in the whole world but you. I love you, Cecily. You will marry me, won't you?
You silly boy! Of course. Why, we have been engaged for the last three months.
For the last three months? -- Oscar Wilde
She had a passion for secrecy, but she herself was merely a Sphinx without a secret. -- Oscar Wilde
Complex people waste half their strength in trying to conceal what they do. Is it any wonder they should always come to grief? -- Oscar Wilde
Ah! that quite does for me. I haven't a word to say ... Too much care was taken with our education, I am afraid. To have been well brought up is a great drawback nowadays. It shuts one out from so much. -- Oscar Wilde
I love the French language ... it's a delightful language, especially to curse with. It's like whopping your ass with silk. -- Oscar Wilde
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious -- Oscar Wilde
I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones. -- Oscar Wilde
Love is like a war; easy to start but hard to end and you never know where it might take you. -- Oscar Wilde
If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in solving the problem of poverty -- Oscar Wilde
They met a policeman and brought him back. The man rang the bell several times, but there was no answer. Except for a light in one of the top windows, the house was all dark. After -- Oscar Wilde
Life is short, art is infinite. -- Oscar Wilde
The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, and sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a soul in each one of us. I know it. -- Oscar Wilde
Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds. -- Oscar Wilde
How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that the Soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver. -- Oscar Wilde
Well, she wore far too much rouge last night, and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of desperation in a woman. -- Oscar Wilde
I don't wish to harm the ghost in any way,' he said. He looked at his young sons. 'And it is not polite to throw pillows at someone who has been in this house for so long. -- Oscar Wilde
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital. -- Oscar Wilde
Those who go beneath the surface, do so at their peril. -- Oscar Wilde
There is always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies. -- Oscar Wilde
The costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life. -- Oscar Wilde
A man who marries his mistress leaves a vacancy in that position. -- Oscar Wilde
Marriage is hardly a thing one can do now and then, except in America. -- Oscar Wilde
I believe I am to have enough to live on for about eighteen months at any
rate, so that if I may not write beautiful books, I may at least read beautiful
books; and what joy can be greater? -- Oscar Wilde
And now, I am dying beyond my means. (Said while sipping champagne on his deathbed.) -- Oscar Wilde
Give me the luxuries and I can dispense with the necessities. -- Oscar Wilde
Let us have no machine-made ornament at all; it is all bad and worthless and ugly. -- Oscar Wilde
Did you hear what I was playing, Lane?
I didn't think it polite to listen, sir. -- Oscar Wilde
What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? -- Oscar Wilde
the thing whose grotesque misshapen shadow on the spotted carpet showed him that it had not stirred, but -- Oscar Wilde
Nothing should be out of the reach of hope. Life is a hope. -- Oscar Wilde
But Venice, like Oxford, had kept the background for romance, and, to the true romantic, background was everything, or almost everything. -- Oscar Wilde
The two great turning-points of my life were when my father sent to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison. -- Oscar Wilde
Could we live it over again, Were it worth the pain, Could the passionate past that is fled Call back its dead! -- Oscar Wilde
One must have some sort of occupation nowadays. If I hadn't my debts I shouldn't have anything to think about. -- Oscar Wilde
The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish. And unselfish people are colourless. They lack individuality. -- Oscar Wilde
I have nothing to declare but my genius, and this four-kilo bag of cocaine. -- Oscar Wilde
Dear Christ! the very prison walls Suddenly seemed to reel, And the sky above my head became Like a casque of scorching steel; And, though I was a soul in pain, My pain I could not feel. -- Oscar Wilde
How clever are you, my dear! You never mean a single word you say! -- Oscar Wilde
Caricature is the tribute which mediocrity pays to genius. -- Oscar Wilde
Men of thoughts should have nothing to do with action. -- Oscar Wilde
American girls are as clever at concealing their parents as English women are at concealing their past. -- Oscar Wilde
You are remarkably modern, Mabel. A little too modern, perhaps. Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern. One is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly. -- Oscar Wilde
A virtuous abstinence from the joys of pederasty comes most easily to those who have no taste for it. -- Oscar Wilde
Some love too little, some too long, Some sell, and others buy; Some do the deed with many tears, And some without a sigh: For each man kills the thing he loves, Yet each man does not die. He -- Oscar Wilde
Choice is taken from them and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination, and disobedience its charm. (138) -- Oscar Wilde
With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone. -- Oscar Wilde
London is full of women who trust their husbands. One can always recognize them. They look so thoroughly unhappy. -- Oscar Wilde
Lord Henry looked serious for some moments, 'It is perfectly monstrous,' he said at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutley and entirely true. -- Oscar Wilde
Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude. -- Oscar Wilde
There are works which wait, and which one does not understand for a long time; the reason is that they bring answers to questions which have not yet been raised; for the question often arrives a terribly long time after the answer. -- Oscar Wilde
I have come up to town expressly to propose to her.
Algernon. I thought you had come up for pleasure? ... I call that business. -- Oscar Wilde
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure -- Oscar Wilde
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again. -- Oscar Wilde
I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who be in jail
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long. -- Oscar Wilde
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. -- Oscar Wilde
To become the spectator of one's own life, as Harry says, is to escape the suffering of life. I -- Oscar Wilde
To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life. -- Oscar Wilde
Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching. -- Oscar Wilde
Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. -- Oscar Wilde
I remember your saying once that there is a fatality about good resolutions - that they are always made too late. Mine certainly were. -- Oscar Wilde
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. -- Oscar Wilde
As a rule, people who act lead the most commonplace lives. They are good husbands, or faithful wives, or something tedious...How different Sibyl was! She lived her finest tragedy. -- Oscar Wilde
When a man is old enough to do wrong he should be old enough to -- Oscar Wilde
From the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul brain and power. -- Oscar Wilde
I can sympathise with everything, except suffering", cried Lord Harry, Shrugging his shoulders. "I cannot sympathise with that. It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. -- Oscar Wilde
LORD ILLINGWORTH. As George Harford I had everything I wanted. Now I have merely everything that other people want, which isn't nearly so pleasant. -- Oscar Wilde
The greatest of all sins is stupidity. -- Oscar Wilde
Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They're the only things we can pay. -- Oscar Wilde
His nature had developed like a flower, had borne blossoms of scarlet flame. Out of its secret hiding-place had crept his Soul, and Desire had come to meet it on the way. -- Oscar Wilde
I don't think I am heartless. Do you?'
'You have done too many foolish things during the last fortnight to be entitled to give yourself that name, Dorian,' answered Lord Henry with his sweet melancholy smile. -- Oscar Wilde
It is what we fear that happens to us. -- Oscar Wilde
I'll bet you anything you like that half an hour after they have met, they will be calling each other sister.
Women only do that when they have called each other a lot of other things first. -- Oscar Wilde
The beautiful, passionate, ruined South, the land of magnolias and music, of roses and romance ... living on the memory of crushing defeats -- Oscar Wilde
Oh, I love London Society! I think it has immensely improved. It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what Society should be. lord caversham. Hum! Which is Goring? Beautiful idiot, or the other thing? mabel chiltern. -- Oscar Wilde
It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art. -- Oscar Wilde
In its primary aspect, a painting has no more spiritual message than an exquisite fragment of Venetian glass. The channels by which all noble and imaginative work in painting should touch the soul are not those of the truths of lives. -- Oscar Wilde
A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it. -- Oscar Wilde
He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends. -- Oscar Wilde
An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him. -- Oscar Wilde
Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them. -- Oscar Wilde
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn't know the market place of any single thing. -- Oscar Wilde
Oh, do not cease at all; I thought the nightingale sang but at night; or if thou needst must cease, then let my lips touch the sweet lips that can such music make. -- Oscar Wilde
I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves. -- Oscar Wilde
Whatever, in fact, is modern in our life we owe to the Greeks. Whatever is an anachronism is due to mediaevalism. -- Oscar Wilde
Everything in moderation, including moderation. -- Oscar Wilde
The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all. -- Oscar Wilde
My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality. -- Oscar Wilde
However, it is always nice to be expected, and not to arrive. -- Oscar Wilde
All criticism is a form of autobiography -- Oscar Wilde
Niagara Falls is simply a vast unnecessary amount of water going over the wrong way and then falling over unnecessary cliffs ... The wonder would be if the water did not fall. -- Oscar Wilde
Sin should be solitary and have no accomplices. -- Oscar Wilde
The dead linger sometimes. -- Oscar Wilde
I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. -- Oscar Wilde
She knew nothing but she had everything he had lost. -- Oscar Wilde
One of the requisites of sanity is to disagree with the majority of the British public. -- Oscar Wilde
We call ours a utilitarian age, and we do not know the uses of any single thing. We have forgotten that water can cleanse, that fire can purify, and that the Earth is mother to us all. -- Oscar Wilde
The only thing that ever consoles man for the stupid things he does is the praise he always gives himself for doing them. -- Oscar Wilde
Nobody of any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of sunset. Sunsets are quite old fashioned. To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism of temperament. Upon the other hand they go on. -- Oscar Wilde
Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks. -- Oscar Wilde
One can realise a thing in a single moment, but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet. -- Oscar Wilde
All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon. -- Oscar Wilde
There was purification in punishment. Not 'Forgive us our sins,' but 'Smite us for our iniquities' should be the prayer of a man to a most just God. -- Oscar Wilde
Not "Forgive us for our sins" but "Smite us for our iniquities" should be the prayer of man to a most just God. -- Oscar Wilde
We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. I mean everything that I have said. -- Oscar Wilde
We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbor with those virtues that are likely to benefit ourselves. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. -- Oscar Wilde
The only one you need in your life is that person who shows you he needs you in his. -- Oscar Wilde
All those who come in contact with his [Christ's] personality, even though they may neither bow to his altar or kneel before his priest, in some way find that the ugliness of their sin is taken away and the beauty of their sorrow is revealed to them. -- Oscar Wilde
It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone. -- Oscar Wilde
Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; -- Oscar Wilde
experimental method was the only method by which one could arrive at any scientific analysis of the passions; and certainly Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemed to promise rich and fruitful results. His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon -- Oscar Wilde
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. -- Oscar Wilde
People who shout so loud, my lords, do nothing; the only men I fear are silent men -- Oscar Wilde
Some one has killed herself for love of you. I wish that I had ever had such an experience. -- Oscar Wilde
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. -- Oscar Wilde
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. -- Oscar Wilde
I've now realised for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest. -- Oscar Wilde
Each of us has heaven and hell in him... -- Oscar Wilde
After a good quality dinner one will be able to forgive anybody, still one's own relations. -- Oscar Wilde
I am always astonishing myself. It is the only thing that makes life worth living. -- Oscar Wilde
Mothers, of course, are all right. They pay a chap's bills and don't bother him. But fathers bother a chap and never pay his bills. -- Oscar Wilde
I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself do not interest me. The have not got the charm of novelty. -- Oscar Wilde
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation. -- Oscar Wilde
I like the duchess very much, but I don't love her."
"And the duchess loves you very much, but she likes you less, so you are excellently matched. -- Oscar Wilde
They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. -- Oscar Wilde
History is merely gossip -- Oscar Wilde
The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature -- Oscar Wilde
When I was young I thought money was the most important thing in life, now that I'm old - I know it is! -- Oscar Wilde
And the trees were so glad to have the children back again that they had covered themselves with blossoms, and were waving their arms gently above the children's heads. -- Oscar Wilde
Like silver moons the pale narcissi lay -- Oscar Wilde
What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us. -- Oscar Wilde
I never saw sad men who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
We prisoners called the sky,
And at every happy cloud that passed
In such strange freedom by. -- Oscar Wilde
Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes. -- Oscar Wilde
How long could you love a woman who didn't love you, Cecil?
A woman who didn't love me? Oh, all my life! -- Oscar Wilde
Children start out loving their parents, but as they grow older and discover their parents are human, they become judgmental. And sometimes, when they mature, they forgive their parents, especially when they discover they are also human. -- Oscar Wilde
We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken. -- Oscar Wilde
I love scrapes. They are the only things that are never serious."
"Oh, that's nonsense, Algy. You never talk anything but nonsense."
"Nobody ever does. -- Oscar Wilde
The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her. -- Oscar Wilde
Making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. -- Oscar Wilde
It was useless. The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks. Then, -- Oscar Wilde
For that there was no atonement; but though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was possible still, -- Oscar Wilde