Oscar Wilde Quotes
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I could never quite accustom myself to absinthe, but it suits my style so well.
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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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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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Just because a man has died for it, does not make it true.
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Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.
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The world has been made by fools that wise men may live in it.
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I am tired of myself to-night. I should like to be somebody else.
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The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
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It is chiefly, I regret to say, through journalism that such people find expression. I regret it because there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
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If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
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We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken.
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However, it is always nice to be expected, and not to arrive.
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Aestheticism is a search after the signs of the beautiful. It is the science of the beautiful through which men seek the correlation of the arts. It is, to speak more exactly, the search after the secret of life.
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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.
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As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.
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The best way to enjoy your job is to imagine yourself without one.
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I could deny it if I liked. I could deny anything if I liked.
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I am not at all cynical, I have merely got experience, which, however, is very much the same thing.
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We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
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Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
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I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
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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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Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity.
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But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.