Oscar Wilde Quotes
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No theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself.
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Of course I have played outdoor games. I once played dominoes in an open air cafe in Paris.
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No woman should have a memory. Memory in a woman is the beginning of dowdiness. One can always tell from a woman's bonnet whether she has got a memory or not.
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He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing.
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Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given away. The ruby shall be redder than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as the great sea.
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When one has never heard a man's name in the course of one's life, it speaks volumes for him; he must be quite respectable.
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Art persists, it timelessly continues.
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Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.
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If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it.
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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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God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too.
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All criticism is a form of autobiography.
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They flaunt their conjugal felicity in one's face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins.
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Art is not to be taught in Academies. It is what one looks at, not what one listens to, that makes the artist. The real schools should be the streets.
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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 past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.
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There is a tiny yellow daffodil, The butterfly can see it from afar, Although one summer evening's dew could fill Its little cup twice over, ere the star Had called the lazy shepherd to his fold, And be no prodigal.
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Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind sorrow there is always sorrow. Pain, unlike pleasure, wears no mask. ... For this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow. There are times when sorrow seems to me to be the only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other, but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain.
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The security of Society lies in custom and unconscious instinct, and the basis of the stability of Society, as a healthy organism, is the complete absence of any intelligence amongst its members.
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Men of thoughts should have nothing to do with action.
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In England it is enough for a man to try and produce any serious, beautiful work to lose all his rights as a citizen.
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An ordinary man away from home giving advice.
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Intuition is a strange instinct that tells a woman she is right, whether she is or not.
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I know. In fact, I am never wrong.