Oscar Wilde Quotes
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Always be a little unexpected.
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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.
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Sins of the flesh are nothing. They are maladies for physicians to cure, if they should be cured. Sins of the soul alone are shameful.
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It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.
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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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It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one, behind one's back, that are absolutely and entirely true.
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The condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection is youth.
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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 center of pain.
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True friends stab you in the front.
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It is perfectly possible to get what you think you want and be miserable. It's possible too, to never get it but deeply enjoy the process of trying. In this world, there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
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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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Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.
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One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
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I can resist anything but the temptation to make a clever witticism.
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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 are specially designed to appeal to the sense of humour.
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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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'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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Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.
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No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
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The man with a clear conscience probably has a poor memory.
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Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance. She is a veil, rather than a mirror.
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Spontaneity is a meticulously prepared art.
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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.