Oscar Wilde Quotes
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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.
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What you really are is a Bunburyist. I was quite right in saying you were a Bunburyist. You are one of the most advanced Bunburyists I know.
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The only possible form of exercise is to talk, not to walk.
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Human life--that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.
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In a temple everything should be serious except the thing that is being worshiped.
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For one moment our lives met, our souls touched.
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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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The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.
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Ever since I met you I have admired you more than any girl...I have ever met since...I met you.
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I never read a book I must review; it prejudices you so.
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There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.
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The ugly and stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live-- undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They never bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Henry; my brains, such as they are-- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks-- we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.
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Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.
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But whether I become a believer or remain an agnostic, my belief or disbelief must derive its source from within, not from without. I, myself, must create its symbols. The transcendental is that which produces its own form. I will never discover its secret if I do not find it in my own heart; if I do not possess it already I shall never be able to acquire it.
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Oh, why will parents always appear at the wrong time? Some extraordinary mistake in nature, I suppose.
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The way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we must see it on the tight-rope.
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When I see a spade, I call it a spade. I'm glad to say I have never seen a spade. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use it. It's the only thing he's fit for.
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It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.
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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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One should never trust a woman who tells her real age. If she tells that, she'll tell anything.
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The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result.
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Even before I met you I was far from indifferent to you.
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A simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle.
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An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.