Oscar Wilde Quotes
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It is absurd to say that there are neither ruins nor curiosities in America when they have their mothers and their manners.
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As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.
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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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If you want to be a doormat you have to lay yourself down first.
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Here is the first passionate love-letter I have ever written in my life. Strange, that my first passionate love-letter should have been addressed to a dead girl. Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent people we call the dead?
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Credit is a young man's capital.
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Like strange mechanical grotesques, Making fantastic arabesques, The shadows raced across the blind.
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The best people to work for are me, myself and I.
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The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace.
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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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As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.
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If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart.
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Beautiful things like beautiful sins belong to the rich.
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It is quite true that I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man usually gives to a friend. Somehow, I had never loved a woman. I suppose I never had time. Perhaps, as Harry says, a really grande passion is the privilege of those who have nothing to do, and that is the use of the idle classes in a country.
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We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbor with those virtues that are likely to benefit ourselves. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets.
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Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching.
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Self-denial is simply a method by which arrests his progress, and self-sacrifice a survival of the mutilation of the savage.
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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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While one should always study the method of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely universal. The first personality, which no one should copy.
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Now and then it is a joy to have one's table red with wine and roses.
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The poet is the supreme artist, for he is the master of colour and of form, and the real musician besides, and is lord over all life and all arts.
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I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished.
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I have put my talent into writing, my genius I have saved for living.
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Women have become so highly educated... that nothing should surprise us nowadays, except happy marriages.