Oscar Wilde Quotes
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If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first.
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Formerly we used to canonize our heroes. The modern method is to vulgarize them. Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable.
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I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
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Nobody ever commits a crime without doing something stupid.
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This wallpaper is dreadful, one of us will have to go.
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Women's styles may change but their designs remain the same.
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With an evening coat and a white tie, anybody, even a stock broker, can gain a reputation for being civilized.
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Nobody of any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of sunset. Sunsets are quite old fashioned. To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism of temperament. Upon the other hand they go on.
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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 won't belong to a club that accepts me as a member.
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The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art.
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Don't run down dyed hair and painted faces. There is an extraordinary charm in them, sometimes.
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The only proper intoxication is conversation.
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Conscience makes egotists of us all.
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When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?
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The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man. And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not?
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To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.
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There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other-by language, which is the parent, and not the child, of thought.
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Whatever harsh criticisms may be passed on the construction of her sentences, she at least possesses that one touch of vulgarity that makes the whole world kin.
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Well I won't argue about the matter. You always want to argue about things. That is exactly what things were originally made for.
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It is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in private life. Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrees.
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Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be invited to cocktail parties.
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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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Is it thy will that I should wax and wane, Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey, And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day?