Oscar Wilde Quotes
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'Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written.
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I can resist anything but the temptation to make a clever witticism.
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One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
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London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce the serious people, or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don't know.
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Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams.
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Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.
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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.
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We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.
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It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.
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The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.
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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.
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She lives the poetry she cannot write.
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And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,None knew so well as I:For he who lives more lives than oneMore deaths than one must die.
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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.
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Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
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Only the shallow know themselves.
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You can fake intelligence, but you can't fake wit.
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The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.
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One has a right to judge a man by the effect he has over his friends.
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We are specially designed to appeal to the sense of humour.
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We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.
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Sooner or later we have all to pay for what we do.
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Extravagance is the luxury of the poor; penury is the luxury of the rich.
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To give and not expect return, that is what lies at the heart of love.