Oscar Wilde Quotes
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The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all.
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It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us.
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To elope is cowardly; it is running away from danger; and danger has become so rare in modern life.
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The worst of it is that I am perpetually being punished for nothing; this governor loves to punish, and he punishes by taking my books away from me. It's perfectly awful to let the mind grind itself away between the upper and nether millstones of regret and remorse without respite; with books my life would be livable -- any life.
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Nothing is good in moderation. You cannot know good in anything until you have torn the heart out of it by excess.
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And when wind and winter harden All the loveless land, It will whisper of the garden, You will understand.
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The only real people are the people who never existed.
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To drift with every passion till my soulIs a stringed lute on which all winds can play, Is it for this that I have given away Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll Scrawled over on some boyish holiday With idle songs for pipe and virelay, Which do but mar the secret of the whole.
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My friend is not allowed to go out today. I sit by his side and read him passages from his own life. They fill him with surprise. Everyone should keep someone else's diary; I sometimes suspect you of keeping mine.
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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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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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The American father is never seen in London. He passes his life entirely in Wall Street and communicates with his family once a month by means of a telegram in cipher.
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I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.
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This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
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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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Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting.
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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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Freedom, individualism and being yourself so long as you don't hurt another's physical person or property: The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself.
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The ability of the theist to misunderstand a thing is directly proportional to the obviousness of the thing.
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One can only give an unbiased opinion about things that do not interest one, which is no doubt the reason an unbiased opinion is always valueless. The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing.
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Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.
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When bankers get together they talk about art. When artists get together, they talk about money.
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Writing bores me so.
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That very concentration of vision and intensity of purpose which is the characteristic of the artistic temperament is in itself a mode of limitation. To those who are preoccupied with the beauty of form nothing else seems of much importance.