Oscar Wilde Quotes
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If art is to have a special train, the critic must keep some seats reserved on it.
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I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare’s plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.
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Life would be dull without them.
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A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say at the age of eighteen.
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...The two great turning-points of my life were when my father sent to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison.
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Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword! Some kill their love when they are young, And some when they are old; Some strangle with the hands of Lust, Some with the hands of Gold: The kindest use a knife, because The dead so soon grow cold. Some love too little, some too long, Some sell, and others buy; Some do the deed with many tears, And some without a sigh: For each man kills the thing he loves, Yet each man does not die.
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As a rule, I think they are quite impossible. Geniuses talk so much, don't they? Such a bad habit! And they are always thinking about themselves, when I want them to be thinking about me.
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Don't use big words. They mean so little.
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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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She...can talk brillantly upon any subject provided she knows nothing about it.
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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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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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It is grossly selfish to require of one's neighbour that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why should he? If he can think, he will probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is monstrous to require thought of any kind.
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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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Foxhunting... the unspeakable pursuing the inedible.
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Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.
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There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was a real joy in that--perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims...
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She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.
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When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.
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I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception.
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If a woman wants to hold a man she has merely to appeal to what is worst in him.
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Oh, how I vainly wished to the bearded man in the sky that I was Neapolitan. Why? So I could bring in a fine Neapolitan pest control to help with Queensberry's problem before it gets out of hand.
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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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Personality must be accepted for what it is. You mustn't mind that a poet is a drunk, rather that drunks are not always poets.