Oscar Wilde Quotes
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Oh, no doubt the cod is a splendid swimmer - admirable for swimming purposes but not for eating.
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Even before I met you I was far from indifferent to you.
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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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If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened. It is simply expression that gives reality to things.
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When I went to America I had two secretaries, one for autographs, one for locks of hair. Within six months the one had died of writer's cramp, the other was completely bald.
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Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
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There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature, that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination, and disobedience its charm.
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I never read a book I must review; it prejudices you so.
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Good intentions have been the ruin of the world. The only people who have achieved anything have been those who have had no intentions at all.
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Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.
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Cleverness becomes a public nuisance.
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You know what a woman's curiosity is.
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As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.
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Every impulse we strangle will only poison us.
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We become lovers when we see Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet makes us students. The blood of Duncan is upon our hands, with Timon werage against the world, and when Lear wanders out upon the heath the terror of madness touches us. Ours is the white sinlessness of Desdemona, and ours, also, the sin of Iago.
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He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing.
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Don't use big words. They mean so little.
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Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.
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A man who takes himself too seriously will find that no one else takes him seriously.
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It is a vulgar error to suppose that America was ever discovered. It was merely detected.
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It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist's life is that he cannot realise his ideal. But the true tragedy that dogs the steps of most artists is that they realise their ideal too absolutely. For, when the ideal is realised, it is robbed of its wonder and its mystery, and becomes simply a new starting-point for an ideal that is other than itself.
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In fact, now you mention the subject, I have been very bad in my own small way. I don't think you should be so proud of that, though I am sure it must have been very pleasant.
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Fool, nothing is impossible in Russia but reform.
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You have filled my tea with lumps of sugar, and though I asked most distinctly for bread and butter, you have given me cake. I am known for the gentleness of my disposition, and the extraordinary sweetness of my nature, but I warn you, Miss Cardew, you may go too far.