Oscar Wilde Quotes
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In the old times men carried out their rights for themselves as they lived, but nowadays every baby seems born with a social manifesto in its mouth much bigger than itself.
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What the hell is an oboe?
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But the bravest man among us is afraid of himself.
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The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.
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There is nothing that art cannot express.
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The great events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion. We reject the burden of their memory, and have anodynes against them. But the little things, the things of no moment, remain with us. In some tiny ivory cell the brain stores the most delicate, and the most fleeting impressions.
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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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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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A truly good woman comes in only two types: One who knows nothing and the other who knows everything.
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Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything, and when they grow older they know it.
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I don't like principles. I prefer prejudices.
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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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I write because it gives me the greatest possible artistic pleasure to write. If my work pleases the few I am gratified. As for the mob, I have no desire to be a popular novelist. It is far too easy.
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All religious organizations exist to sell themselves to the rich.
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As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.
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The beautiful, passionate, ruined South, the land of magnolias and music, of roses and romance . . . living on the memory of crushing defeats.
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You can have your secret as long as I have your heart.
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There is no Mystery so great as Misery.
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Varnishing is the only artistic process with which Royal Academicians are thoroughly familiar.
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In a very ugly and sensible age, the arts borrow, not from life, but from each other.
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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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I am sorry my life is so marred and maimed by extravagance. But I cannot live otherwise. I, at any rate, pay the penalty of suffering.
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Lord Illingworth: Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.
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All criticism is a form of autobiography.