Oscar Wilde Quotes
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I have met a lot of hardboiled eggs in my time, but you're twenty minutes.
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To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.
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There are two ways to dislike poetry: One is to dislike it; the other is to read Pope.
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Science can never grapple with the irrational. That is why it has no future before it, in this world.
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This ghastly state of things is what you call Bunburying, I suppose? Algernon. Yes, and a perfectly wonderful Bunbury it is. The most wonderful Bunbury I have ever had in my life. Jack. Well, you've no right whatsoever to Bunbury here. Algernon. That is absurd. One has a right to Bunbury anywhere one chooses. Every serious Bunburyist knows that.
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Learned conversation is either the affectation of the ignorant or the profession of the mentally unemployed.
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Now produce your explanation and pray make it improbable.
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He must have a truly romantic nature, for he weeps when there is nothing at all to weep about.
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All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon.
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And, as for what is called improving conversation, that is merely the foolish method by which the still more foolish philanthropist feebly tries to disarm the just rancour of the criminal classes.
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But what world says that I'm wicked? It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent terms.
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He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
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Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.
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Would you be in any way offended if I said that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection?
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It is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.
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Like two doomed ships that pass in storm we had crossed each other's way: but we made no sign, we said no word, we had no word to say.
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The English public always feels perfectly at ease when a mediocrity is talking to it.
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Each little thing that we do passes into the great machine of life which may grind our virtues to powder and make them worthless, or transform our sins into elements of a new civilization, more marvelous and more splendid than any that has gone before.
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We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it. The public like to insult poets because they are individual, but once they have insulted them, they leave them alone.
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It is always painful fo part from people whom one has known for a very brief space of time. The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity. But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable.
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The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
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A man's life is of more value than a woman's. It has larger issues, wider scope, greater ambitions. Our lives revolve in curves of emotions. It is upon lines of intellect that a man's life progresses. I have just learnt this, and much else with it, from Lord Goring. And I will not spoil your life for you, nor see you spoil it as a sacrifice to me, a useless sacrifice.
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Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect.
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Conscience and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.