Oscar Wilde Quotes
-
If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened. It is simply expression that gives reality to things.
-
The real weakness of England lies, not in incomplete armaments or unfortified coasts, not in the poverty that creeps through sunless lanes, or the drunkenness that brawls in loathsome courts, but simply in the fact that her ideals are emotional and not intellectual.
-
His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language.
-
Oh, no doubt the cod is a splendid swimmer - admirable for swimming purposes but not for eating.
-
Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.
-
She was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions. She tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy.
-
Individualism has really the higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age.
-
Civilisation is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.
-
His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be.
-
The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art.
-
Only people who look dull ever get into the House of Commons, and only people who are dull ever succeed there.
-
Football is all very well as a game for rough girls, but is hardly suitable for delicate boys.
-
For Man's grim Justice goes its way,And will not swerve aside:It slays the weak, it slays the strong,It has a deadly stride:With iron heel it slays the strong,The monstrous parricide!
-
It takes a thoroughly good woman to do a thoroughly stupid thing.
-
Oh, I love London society! It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what society should be.
-
The only possible form of exercise is to talk, not to walk.
-
It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.
-
I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.
-
You silly Arthur! If you knew anything about...anything, which you don't, you would know that I adore you. Everyone in London knows it except you. It is a public scandal the way I adore you. I have been going about for the last six months telling the whole of society that I adore you. I wonder you consent to have anything to say to me. I have no character left at all. At least, I feel so happy that I am quite sure I have no character left at all.
-
I didn't have a life until I went up onstage.
-
God, bless me with luxury. Necessities I can do without.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Fool, nothing is impossible in Russia but reform.