Oscar Wilde Quotes
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The quivering, ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.
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Oh, I love London society! It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what society should be.
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Tread Lightly, she is nearUnder the snow,Speak gently, she can hearThe daisies grow.
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His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be.
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It is a vulgar error to suppose that America was ever discovered. It was merely detected.
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In fact, the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.... The Japanese people are ... simply a mode of style, an exquisite fancy of art.
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I am Irish by race but the English have condemned me to talk the language of Shakespeare.
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A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?
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The Number our envious Persons, confirmation our capability.
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Even before I met you I was far from indifferent to you.
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The General was essentially a man of peace, except in his domestic life.
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It is a pity to make a mystery out of what should most easily be understood. There is nothing occult about the thought that all things maybe made well or made ill. A work of art is a well-made thing - that is all. It may be a well-made statue of a well-made chair or a well-made book. Art is not a special sauce applied to ordinary cooking; it is the cooking itself that is good. Most simply and generally, Art may be thought of as "The Well Doing of What Needs Doing."
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In spite of the roaring of the young lions at the Union, and the screaming of the rabbits in the home of the vivisect, in spite of Keble College, and the tramways, and the sporting prints, Oxford still remains the most beautiful thing in England, and nowhere else are life and art so exquisitely blended, so perfectly made one.
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A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.
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No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.
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Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.
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When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
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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 only possible form of exercise is to talk, not to walk.
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To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist — the problem is entirely the same in both cases. To know exactly how much oil one must put with one's vinegar.
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I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not.
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And down the long and silent street,The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet,Crept like a frightened girl.
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Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community, and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilisation.
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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.