Oscar Wilde Quotes
-
It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.
-
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
-
Is she such a mystery? She is more than a mystery - she is a mood. Moods don't last. It is their chief charm.
-
He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals.
-
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.
-
Medievalism, with its saints and martyrs, its love of self-torture, its wild passion for wounding itself, its gashing with knives, and its whipping with rods - Medievalism is real Christianity, and the medieval Christ is the real Christ.
-
Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity.
-
Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. . .
-
The man who says his wife can't take a joke, forgets that she took him.
-
Vulgarity is the conduct of other people, just as falsehoods are the truths of other people.
-
The burden of this world is too great for one man to bear, and the world’s sorrow too heavy for one heart to suffer.
-
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
-
It is a great mistake for men to give up paying compliments, for when they give up saying what is charming, they give up thinking what is charming.
-
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. ...Art is the most intense mode of Individualism that the world has known. I am inclined to say that it is the only real mode of Individualism that the world has known. ...Art is Individualism...
-
An optimist will tell you the glass is half-full; the pessimist, half-empty; and the engineer will tell you the glass is twice the size it needs to be.
-
We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.
-
The world has been made by fools that men should live in it.
-
Any place you love is the world to you.
-
There are as many perfections as there are imperfect men. And while to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free, to the claims of conformity no man may yield and remain free at all.
-
True friends stab you in the front.
-
Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.
-
They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about.
-
Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One must eat muffins quite calmly, it is the only way to eat them.
-
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it.