Oscar Wilde Quotes
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It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man', says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life is a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
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The British cook, for her iniquities, is a foolish woman who should be turned into a pillar of salt which she never knows how to use.
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She lives the poetry she cannot write.
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The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated.
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The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.
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Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
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A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
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And it is only fair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always apologise to one in private for what they have written against one in public.
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How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.
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The camera, you know, will never capture you. Photography, in my experience, has the miraculous power of transferring wine into water.
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But what of life whose bitter hungry sea Flows at our heels, and gloom of sunless night Covers the days which never more return? Ambition, love and all the thoughts that burn We lose too soon, and only find delight In withered husks of some dead memory.
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It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produces false impression.
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The only link between Literature and the Drama left to us in England at the present moment is the bill of the play.
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You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter - a girl brought up with the utmost care - to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel?
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The chin a little higher, dear. Style largely depends on the way the chin is worn. They are worn very high, just at present.
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He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.
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I never play cricket. It requires one to assume such indecent postures.
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Yes, very sensible... People die of common sense, Dorian, one lost moment at a time. Life is a moment. There is no hereafter. So make it burn always with the hardest flame.
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In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press.
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Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.
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I have learned this: it is not what one does that is wrong, but what one becomes as a consequence of it.
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It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
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Grass is hard and lumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects.
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No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide. I can quite understand how any ordinary critic would be strongly prejudiced against a work that was accompanied by a premature and unnecessary panegyric from the publisher. A publisher is simply a useful middle-man. It is not for him to anticipate the verdict of criticism.