Oscar Wilde Quotes
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A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses.
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The only sin is stupidity.
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What you read when you don't have to...
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It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.
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Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature.
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However, I think anything is better than high intellectual pressure. That is the most unbecoming thing there is. It makes the noses of the young girls so particularly large.
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I often take exercise. Why only yesterday I had breakfast in bed.
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The problem with the common person is that he is so unbearably common!
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Art should never be popular.
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I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience.
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The nineteenth century is a turning point in history, simply on account of the work of two men, Darwin and Renan, the one the critic of the Book of Nature, the other the critic of the books of God. Not to recognise this is to miss the meaning of one of the most important eras in the progress of the world.
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Bad manners make a journalist.
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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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Philosophy is like a normal personal organizer, but it's smaller than a matchbox.
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For a year after that was done to me I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time. That is not such a tragic thing as possibly it sounds to you. To those who are in prison tears are a part of every day's experience. A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not a day on which one's heart is happy.
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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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The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.
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The true artist is known by what he annexes, and he annexes everything.
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Tell me, when you are alone with him Max Beerbohm Sphinx, does he take off his face and reveal his mask?
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Whenever I'm in doubt, I ask myself, 'What would Jesus do?' And then I realize, Jesus got crucified, so maybe his decision-making isn't all that great.
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Artists, like the Greek gods, are only revealed to one another.
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To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
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Yes, I am a thorough republican. No other form of government is so favorable to the growth of art. ...because of the importance it places on the individual, their liberty, self-expression, creativity, and personal responsibility.
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God grant me the serenity to accept that people are ignorant, the courage to uphold the law when I'm hostile, & the wisdom to realize that murder is illegal.