Oscar Wilde Quotes
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I love the French language... it's a delightful language, especially to curse with. It's like whopping your ass with silk.
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At six o'clock we cleaned our cells, At seven all was still, But the sough and swing of a mighty wing The prison seemed to fill, For the Lord of Death with icy breath Had entered in to kill.
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What the hell is an oboe?
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Foxhunting... the unspeakable pursuing the inedible.
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Human life--that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.
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Industry is the root of all ugliness.
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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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There is nothing in the whole world so unbecoming to a woman as a Nonconformist conscience.
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It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love.
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Clergymen and people who use phrases without wisdom sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation.
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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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When I see a spade, I call it a spade. I'm glad to say I have never seen a spade. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use it. It's the only thing he's fit for.
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America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier in history than itself.
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From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it.
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What do you call a bad man? The sort of man who admires innocence.
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Oh, why will parents always appear at the wrong time? Some extraordinary mistake in nature, I suppose.
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The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.
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And, by the way, one of the most delightful things I find in America is meeting a people without prejudice — everywhere open to the truth.
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We have little time and lots to do, lets take time for everything we do.
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There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.
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America is the noisiest country that ever existed. One is waked up in the morning, not by the singing of the nightingale, but by the steam whistle.
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Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. What this century worships is wealth. The God of this century is wealth. To succeed one must have wealth. At all costs one must have wealth.
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On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.
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I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.