Oscar Wilde Quotes
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It is curious how vanity helps the successful man and wrecks the failure.
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Women have become so highly educated... that nothing should surprise us nowadays, except happy marriages.
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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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Foxhunting... the unspeakable pursuing the inedible.
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And all the woods are alive with the murmur and sound of Spring, And the rose-bud breaks into pink on the climbing briar, And the crocus-bed is a quivering moon of fire Girdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring.
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Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything.
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We Irish are too poetical to be poets; we are a nation of brilliant failures, but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks.
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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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Marco Polo had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rose-colored pearls in the mouths of the dead. A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over its loss.
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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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Well, I know, of course, how important it is not to keep a business engagement, if one wants to retain any sense of the beauty of life.
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He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one's eyes, and does not look at him.
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My life-my whole life- take it, and do with it what you will. I love you-love you as I have never loved any living thing. From the moment I met you I loved you, loved you blindly, adoringly,madly! You didn't know it then-you know it now.
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It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame.
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What the hell is an oboe?
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We women adore failures. They lean on us.
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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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I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses anyone for asking any question - simple curiosity.
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So lets knock a couple back and make some noise.
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Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.
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Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.
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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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I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the house-tops.
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If art is to have a special train, the critic must keep some seats reserved on it.