Oscar Wilde Quotes
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On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American man is ever idle, and partly to the fact that no American wife is considered responsible for the quality of her husband's dinners.
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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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The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value.
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I have made an important discovery... that alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, produces all the effect of intoxication.
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Writing bores me so.
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The 19thc hatred of Realism is Caliban's enraged reaction to seeing his own face in the mirror. The 19thc rejection of Romanticism is Caliban's fury at not seeing his face reflected in the mirror.
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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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As for borrowing Mr. Whistler's ideas about art, the only thoroughly original ideas I have heard him express have had reference to his own superiority as a painter over painters greater than himself.
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Biography lends to death a new terror.
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There is no such thing as morality or immorality in thought. There is immoral emotion.
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'The Lady's World' should be made the recognized organ for the expression of women's opinions on all subjects of literature, art and modern life, and yet it should be a magazine that men could read with pleasure.
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I tried to visit Albania but I couldn't find it on the map.
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It is always worth while asking a question, though it is not always worth while answering one.
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The job of the critic is to report to us his moods.
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The mind of a the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.
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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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You have never been poor, and never known what ambition is.
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How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it was only the other way! If it was I who were to be always young, and the picture that were to grow old! For this — for this — I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give!
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I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.
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When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy.
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Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.
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The world has become sad because a puppet was once melancholy. The nihilist, that strange martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe in, is a purely literary product. He was invented by Turgenev, and completed by Dostoevsky. Robespierre came out of the pages of Rousseau as surely as the People's Palace rose out debris of a novel. Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose.
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Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude.
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I like to do all the talking myself. It saves time, and prevents arguments.