Oscar Wilde Quotes
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It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.
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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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Absolute catholicity of taste is not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art.
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She is absolutely inadmissible into society. Many a woman has a past, but I am told that she has at least a dozen, and that they all fit.
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The longer I live the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us.
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When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.
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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.
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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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Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves.
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We are never more true to ourselves than when we are inconsistent.
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I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.
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Love does not traffic in a marketplace, nor use a huckster's scales. Its joy, like the joy of the intellect, is to feel itself alive. The aim of Love is to love: no more, and no less. You were my enemy: such an enemy as no man ever had. I had given you all my life, and to gratify the lowest and most contemptible of all human passions, hatred and vanity and greed, you had thrown it away. In less than three years you had entirely ruined me in every point of view. For my own sake there was nothing for me to do but to love you.
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Life, is simply a mauvais quart d'heure made up of exquisite moments.
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What is mind but motion in the intellectual sphere?
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Schopenhauer has analysed the pessimism that characterize modern thought, but Hamlet invented it.
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In war, the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich makes slaves of the poor.
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I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.
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Perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for men. There would be more joy in life if we were to accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes.
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That quite does for me. I haven't a word to say... Too much care was taken with our education, I am afraid. To have been well brought up is a great drawback nowadays. It shuts one out from so much.
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Liberty is the chosen resort of the artistic shopper.
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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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It is art, and art only, that reveals us to ourselves.
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Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with man, Destiny never closed her accounts.
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Each class preaches the importance of those virtues it need not exercise. The rich harp on the value of thrift, the idle grow eloquent over the dignity of labor.