Oscar Wilde Quotes
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Learned conversation is either the affectation of the ignorant or the profession of the mentally unemployed.
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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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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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Now produce your explanation and pray make it improbable.
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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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He must have a truly romantic nature, for he weeps when there is nothing at all to weep about.
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And her sweet red lips on these lips of mine Burned like the ruby fire set In the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine, Or the bleeding wounds of the pomegranate, Or the heart of the lotus drenched and wet With the spilt-out blood of the rose-red wine.
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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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He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
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Ah! That must be Aunt Augusta. Only relatives, or creditors, ever ring in that Wagnerian manner.
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Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.
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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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America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.
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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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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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Never regret thy fall, O Icarus of the fearless flight For the greatest tragedy of them all Is never to feel the burning light.
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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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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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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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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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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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What is abnormal in Life stands in normal relations to Art. It is the only thing in Life that stands in normal relations to Art.