Oscar Wilde Quotes
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The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.
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A kiss may ruin a human life.
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Make some sacrifice for your art and you will be repaid, but ask of art to sacrifice herself for you and a bitter disappointment may come to you.
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The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.
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I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood.
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The world has been made by fools that wise men may live in it.
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If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture...In a house, we all feel of the proper proportions. Everything is subordinated to us, fashioned for our use and our pleasure.
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However, it is always nice to be expected, and not to arrive.
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There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
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The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.
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Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
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Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.
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Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
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Nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion.
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The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.
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The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.
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People seldom tell the truths that are worth telling. We ought to choose our truths as carefully as we choose our lies and to select our virtues with as much thought as we bestow upon the selection of our enemies.
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There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
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It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.
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Lots of people act well, but few people talk well. This shows that talking is the more difficult of the two.
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The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.
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In the wild struggle for existance, 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.
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Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it.
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Comfort is the only thing our civilization can give us.