Oscar Wilde Quotes
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It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist's life is that he cannot realise his ideal. But the true tragedy that dogs the steps of most artists is that they realise their ideal too absolutely. For, when the ideal is realised, it is robbed of its wonder and its mystery, and becomes simply a new starting-point for an ideal that is other than itself.
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In his very rejection of art Walt Whitman is an artist. He tried to produce a certain effect by certain means and he succeeded....He stands apart, and the chief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance. He has begun a prelude to larger themes. He is the herald to a new era. As a man he is the precursor of a fresh type. He is a factor in the heroic and spiritual evolution of the human being. If Poetry has passed him by, Philosophy will take note of him.
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Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognizes infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it.
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Rugby is a game for barbarians played by gentlemen. Football is a game for gentlemen played by barbarians.
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I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.
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But the bravest man among us is afraid of himself.
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The evolution of man is slow. The injustice of men is great.
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The people who have adored me — there have not been very many, but there have been some — have always insisted on living on, long after I had ceased to care for them, or they to care for me.
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We have little time and lots to do, lets take time for everything we do.
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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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Oh, why will parents always appear at the wrong time? Some extraordinary mistake in nature, I suppose.
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When I had to fill in my immigration papers, I gave my age as 19, and my profession as genius; I added that I had nothing to declare except my talent.
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Surely Love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the marketplace. It may not be purchased of the merchants, for can it be weighed out in the balance for gold.
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If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.
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If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart.
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Yes; poor Bunbury is a dreadful invalid. Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shillyshallying with the question is absurd.
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You know we poor artists have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to remind the public that we are not savages.
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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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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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The great things in life are what they seem to be. And for that reason, strange as it may sound to you, often are very difficult to interpret (understand). Great passions are for the great of souls. Great events can only be seen by people who are on a level with them. We think we can have our visions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing visions have to be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine.
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An ordinary man away from home giving advice.
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If one were to live his life fully and completely were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream.
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I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to say so. ... Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible still.
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The growing influence of women is the one reassuring thing in our political life.