Oscar Wilde Quotes
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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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By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely overwhelm me.
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Do you know that I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world? Certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance.
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All art is at once surface and symbol.
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I tried to visit Albania but I couldn't find it on the map.
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Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy.
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If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you.
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Do you really keep a diary? I'd give anything to look at it. May I? Oh, no. You see, it is simply a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form I hope you will order a copy.
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Life is too short to be in a hurry.
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The first thing that struck me on landing in America was that if the Americans are not the most well-dressed people in the world, they are the most comfortably dressed.
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A misanthrope I can understand - a womanthrope never.
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The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition.
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Now don't stir. I'll be back in five minutes. And don't fall into any temptations while I am away.
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No gentleman ever has any money.
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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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I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.
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I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out.
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It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.
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I am quite incapable of understanding how any work of art can be criticized from a moral standpoint. The sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate.
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The best art is about individualism, free self-expression and realising a unique, imaginative perspective- A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public are to him non-existent.
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I am not laughing, Dorian; at least I am not laughing at you. But you should not say the greatest romance of your life. You should say the first romance of your life. You will always be loved, and you will always be in love with love. A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the idle classes of a country. Don't be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for you. This is merely the beginning.
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The birds did not understand a single word of what he was saying, but that made no matter, for they put their heads on one side, and looked wise, which is quite as good as understanding a thing, and very much easier.
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Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb a the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf.
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You told me you had destroyed it. I was wrong. It has destroyed me.