Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (Oscar Wilde)

“[Throughout the film, Patrick, who prefers to be called Kitten, dismisses all politics as] serious, serious, serious. ... I love talking about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about.”
“35 is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.”
“A chemist on each side will approach the frontier with a bottle”
“A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?”
“A cynic is someon who knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing.”
“A damsel is a genius in the daytime and a beauty at night.”
“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
“A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.”
“A kiss may ruin a human life.”
“A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.”
“A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her”
“A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies”
“A man who can dominate a London dinner table can dominate the world. The future belongs to the dandy. It is the exquisites who are going to rule.”
“A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.”
“A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
“A man who moralizes is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralizes is invariably plain”
“A man who pays his bills on time is soon forgotten”
“A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.”
“A mans face is his autobiography. A women's face is her work of fiction.”
“A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life.”
“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.”
“A mask tells us more than a face.”
“A misanthrope I can understand - a womanthrope never”
“A person who, because he has corns himself, always treads on other people's toes.”
“A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.”
“A poet can survive everything but a misprint.”
“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.”
“A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it”
“A sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn't know the market price of any single thing.”
“A subject that is beautiful in itself gives no suggestion to the artist. It lacks imperfection.”
“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.”
“A true friend stabs you in the front.”
“A true gentleman is one who is never unintentionally rude”
“A truly good woman comes in only two types: One who knows nothing and the other who knows everything.”
“A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.”
“A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life.”
“A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on”
“A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.”
“Absolute catholicity of taste is not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art.”
“Action is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.”
“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations”
“Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary.”
“Ah! Don't say you agree with me. When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.”
“Ah, nowadays we are all of us so hard up, that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They're the only things we can pay.”
“Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.”
“Alas, I am dying beyond my means.”
“All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.”
“All art is quite useless.”
“All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.”
“All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.”
“All great ideas are dangerous.”
“All religious organizations exist to sell themselves to the rich.”
“All that I desire to point out is the general principle that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”
“All that we know who lie in gaol - Is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, A year whose days are long”
“All trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are sentences of death.”
“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.”
“Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.”
“Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them more.”
“Ambition is the last refuge of failure.”
“America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up”
“America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier in history than itself.”
“America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.”
“An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship.”
“An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship”
“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”
“An inordinate passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young”
“An ordinary man away from home giving advice.”
“And he goes through life, his mouth open, and his mind closed”
“And now, I am dying beyond my means. [Sipping champagne on his deathbed]”
“And the wild regrets and the bloody sweats None knew so well as I: That he who lives more lives than one, More deaths than one shall die.”
“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.”
“Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development”
“Anybody can be good in the country”
“Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it”
“Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature it requires, in fact, that nature of a true Individualist to sympathize with a friend's success.”
“Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature.”
“Argument are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.”
“Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.”
“Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing”
“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.”
“Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.”
“Art never expresses anything but itself.”
“Art, like Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous voices.”
“Artists, like the Greek gods, are only revealed to one another.”
“As a wicked man I am a complete failure. Why, there are lots of people who say I have never really done anything wrong in the whole course of my life. Of course they only say it behind my back.”
“As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested.”
“As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.”
“As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid.”
“As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them”
“As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.”
“As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.”
“As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognize the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as elsewhere, practice must precede perfection.”
“As yet, Bernard Shaw hasn't become prominent enough to have any enemies, but none of his friends like him.”
“At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials.”
“Authority is quite degrading”
“Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all.”
“Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those he has selected.”
“Bad artists always admire each others work.”
“Bad manners make a journalist.”
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
“Beautiful things like beautiful sins belong to the rich,”
“Beauty is a form of genius - is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon.”
“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
“Better the rule of One, whom all obey, than to let clamorous demagogues betray our freedom with the kiss of anarchy.”
“Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.”
“Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole!”
“Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.”
“Biography lends to death a new terror.”
“Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude.”
“But I am afraid that we are beginning to be over-educated; at least everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching”
“But what is the good of friendship if one cannot say exactly what one means? Anybody can say charming things and try to please and to flatter, but a true friend always says unpleasant things, and does not mind giving pain. Indeed, if he is a really true friend he prefers it, for he knows that then he is doing good.”
“By persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation.”
“Caricature is the tribute that mediocrity pays to genius.”
“CECILY. When I see a spade I call it a spade./ GWENDOLEN. I am glad to say I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.”
“Charity creates a multitude of sins.”
“Charity, dear Miss Prism, charity! None of us are perfect. I myself am peculiarly susceptible to draughts.”
“Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.”
“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes, they forgive them”
“Children have a natural antipathy to books - handicraft should be the basis of education. Boys and girls should be taught to use their hands to make something, and they would be less apt to destroy and be mischievous.”
“Civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.”
“Comfort is the only thing our civilization can give us.”
“Conscience and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.”
“Conscience and cowardice are really the same things.”
“Conscience makes egotists of us all.”
“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”
“Consistency is the last resort of the unimaginative”
“Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”
“Conversation should touch everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing.”
“Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones.”
“Cultivated leisure is the aim of man.”
“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”
“Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”
“Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.”
“Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things.”
“Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation”
“Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others.”
“Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.”
“Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.”
“Doing nothing is hard work.”
“Don't give a woman advice: one should never give a woman anything she can't wear in the evening”
“Dullness is the coming of age of seriousness.”
“Each class preaches the importance of those virtues it need not exercise. The rich harp on the value of thrift, the idle grow eloquent over the dignity of labor.”
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
“Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible. The Picture of Dorian Gray”
“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
“Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”
“Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography”
“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.”
“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
“Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.”
“Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.”
“Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.”
“Everything popular is wrong.”
“Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.”
“Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.”
“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”
“Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.”
“Experience is the name we give to our past mistakes”
“Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
“Extravagance is the luxury of the poor; penury is the luxury of the rich”
“Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failures”
“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”
“Fashion is the method by which the fantastic becomes for a moment universal.”
“Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.”
“Fashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment the universal.”
“Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.”
“Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.”
“Find expression for a sorrow, and it will become dear to you. Find an expression for joy, and you will intensify its ecstasy.”
“Flowers are as common in the country as people are in London.”
“For an artist to marry his model is as fatal as for a gourmet to marry his cook: the one gets no sittings, and the other gets no dinners.”
“For he who lives more lives than one - More deaths than one must die”
“For his mourners will be outcast men, and outcasts always mourn.”
“Formerly we used to canonize our heroes. The modern method is to vulgarize them. Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable.”
“Frank Harris has been received in all the great houses once!”
“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.”
“Genius is born, not paid.”
“Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves.”
“God's eternal laws are kind-and break the heart of stone.”
“Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.”
“Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account”
“Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak. They a”
“Good taste is the excuse I've always given for leading such a bad life”
“Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”
“Grief has turned her fair.”
“Hatred is blind, as well as love.”
“He covered page after page with wild words of sorrow and wilder words of pain. There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.”
“He did not wear his scarlet coat, For blood and wine are red, And blood and wine were on his hands When they found him with the dead, The poor dead woman whom he loved, And murdered in her bed”
“He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals.”
“He hadn't a single redeeming vice.”
“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.”
“He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there.”
“He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing.”
“He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realise.”
“He must have a truly romantic nature, for he weeps when there is nothing at all to weep about.”
“He paid some attention to the management of his collieries in the Midland counties, excusing himself for this taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of having coal was that it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of burning wood on his own hearth.”
“He rides in the row at ten o clock in the morning, goes to the Opera three times a week, changes his clothes at least five times a day, and dines out every night of the season. You don't call that leading an idle life, do you?”
“He thinks like a Tory, and talks like a Radical, and that's so important nowadays.”
“He to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives.”
“He was a hero to his valet, who bullied him, and a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in turn. Only England could have produced him, and he always said that the country was going to the dogs. His principles were out of date, but there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices.”
“He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.”
“He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone.”
“Hear no evil, speak no evil - and you'll never be invited to a party”
“Her love was trembling in laughter on her lips.”
“Here is the first passionate love-letter I have ever written in my life. Strange, that my first passionate love-letter should have been addressed to a dead girl. Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent people we call the dead?”
“His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be”
“His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language.”
“History is merely gossip”
“How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.”
“How clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say.”
“How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?”
“How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.”
“How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it was only the other way! If it was I who were to be always young, and the picture that were to grow old! For this--for this--I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give!”
“How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that the Soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver.”
“I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.”
“I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.”
“I am not young enough to know everything.”
“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
“I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.”
“I appropriate what is already mine, for once a thing is published it becomes public property”
“I can believe anything as long as it is incredible”
“I can believe anything provided it is incredible.”
“I can resist everything except temptation.”
“I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.”
“I can sympathize with everything, except suffering.”
“I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.”
“I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.”
“I delight in men over seventy. They always offer one the devotion of a lifetime.”
“I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.”
“I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering.”
“I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.”
“I do not approve of anything which tampers with natural ignorance”
“I don't at all like knowing what people say of me behind my back. It makes me far too conceited.”
“I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean”
“I don't like principles. I prefer prejudices.”
“I don't like Switzerland; it has produced nothing but theologians and waiters.”
“I don't want money. It is only people who pay their bills who want that, and I never pay mine.”
“I don't want to earn my living; I want to live.”
“I forget what killed it. I think it was her proposing to sacrifice the whole world for me. That is always a dreadful moment. It fills one with the terror of eternity.”
“I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.”
“I have found that all ugly things are made by those who strive to make something beautiful, and that all beautiful things are made by those who strive to make something useful.”
“I have made an important discovery... that alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, produces all the effect of intoxication.”
“I have met a lot of hardboiled eggs in my time, but you're twenty minutes.”
“I have nothing to declare but my genius.”
“I have nothing to declare except my genius.”
“I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.”
“I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.”
“I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.”
“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.”
“I like men who have a future and women who have a past”
“I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.”
“I like to do all the talking myself. It saves time, and prevents arguments.”
“I live in fear of not being misunderstood”
“I love acting. It is so much more real than life.”
“I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.”
“I may have said the same thing before...but my explanation, I am sure, will always be different.”
“I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement”
“I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming pe”
“I never saw a man who looked with such a wistful eye upon that little tent of blue which prisoners call the sky.”
“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
“I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.”
“I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.”
“I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.”
“I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.”
“I sometimes think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability”
“I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.”
“I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.”
“I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciosness, to wake their ashes in pain.”
“I was disappointed in Niagara - most people must be disappointed in Niagara. Every American bride is taken there, and the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life.”
“I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”
“If a man needs an elaborate tombstone in order to remain in the memory of his country, it is clear that his living at all was an act of absolute superfluity.”
“If England treats her criminals the way she has treated me, she doesn't deserve to have any”
“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
“If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.”
“If one hears bad music it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation”
“If one tells the truth, one is sure sooner or later to be found out”
“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.”
“If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in solving the problem of poverty”
“If there is anything in the world more annoying than having people talk about you, it is certainly having no one talk about you.”
“If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.”
“If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.”
“If you meet at dinner a man who has spent his life in educating himself you rise from the table richer, and conscious that a high ideal has for a moment touched and sanctified your days.”
“If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.”
“Ignorance is like a delicate fruit; touch it, and the bloom is gone.”
“Illusion is the first of all pleasures.”
“I'm sure I don't know half the people who come to my house. Indeed, from all I hear, I shouldn't like to.”
“Imagination is a quality given a man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.”
“In a temple everything should be serious except the thing that is being worshiped”
“In a very ugly and sensible age, the arts borrow, not from life, but from each other.”
“In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.”
“In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever and ever”
“In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.”
“In America, life is one long expectoration”
“In America, the young are always ready to give to those older than themselves the full benefit of their inexperience”
“In England people actually try to be brilliant at breakfast. That is so dreadful of them! Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.”
“In every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust.”
“In examinations, the foolish ask questions the wise cannot answer.”
“In going to America one learns that poverty is not a necessary accompaniment to civilization.”
“In married life three is company and two none.”
“In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.”
“In old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press.”
“In spite of the roaring of the young lions at the Union, and the screaming of the rabbits in the home of the vivisect, in spite of Keble College, and the tramways, and the sporting prints, Oxford still remains the most beautiful thing in England, and nowhere else are life and art so exquisitely blended, so perfectly made one.”
“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.”
“In the wild struggle for existance, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.”
“In the world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”
“Indeed, in many respects she was quite English and was an excellent example of the fact that we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, the language”
“Indeed, so far from being humorous, the male American is the most abnormally serious creature who ever existed.... It is only fair to admit that he can exaggerate, but even his exaggeration has a rational basis. It is not founded on wit or fancy; it does not spring from any poetic imagination....”
“Insincerity is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities”
“Intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing.”
“It (cricket) requires one to assume such indecent postures”
“It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously.”
“It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.”
“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 a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.”
“It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.”
“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”
“It is absurd to say that there are neither ruins nor curiosities in America, when they have their mothers and their manners”
“It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal”
“It is always the unreadable that occurs.”
“It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.”
“It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way.”
“It is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be good than to be ugly.”
“It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.”
“It is exactly because a man cannot do a thing that he is a proper judge of it”
“It is grossly selfish to require of one's neighbour that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why should he? If he can think, he will probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is monstrous to require thought of any kind.”
“It is he who has broken the bond of marriage, not I. I only break its bondage.”
“It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.”
“It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.”
“It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.”
“It is only fair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always apologize to one in private for what they have written against one in public”
“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”
“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances”
“It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.”
“It is only the modern that ever becomes old fashioned.”
“It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man's deeper nature is soon found out.”
“It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.”
“It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one, behind one's back, that are absolutely and entirely true.”
“It is sweet to dance to violins/ When Love and Life are fair:/ To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes/ Is delicate and rare:/ But it is not sweet with nimble feet/ To dance upon the air!”
“It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution”
“It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors”
“It is through Art and through Art only that we can realize our perfection; through Art and Art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence”
“It is through Art, and through Art only, that we can realise our perfection.”
“It is very vulgar to talk about one's business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties.”
“It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produced a false impression.”
“It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.”
“It is well for our vanity that we slay the criminal, for if we suffered him to live he might show us what we had gained by his crime.”
“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
“It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.”
“It takes a thoroughly good woman to do a thoroughly stupid thing”
“It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly to be regretted, for both their sakes.”
“It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us. Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.”
“Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”
“It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame.”
“Journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarist”
“Judges, like the criminal classes, have their lighter moments”
“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.”
“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.”
“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.”
“Lewis Morris: "It is a conspiracy of silence against me - a conspiracy of silence! What should I do?" Oscar Wilde: "Join it”
“Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.”
“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”
“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.”
“Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.”
“Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.”
“Life is too important to be taken seriously.”
“Life would be dull without them.”
“Life! Life! Don't let us go to life for our fulfillment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic”
“Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a mauvais quart d'heure made up of exquisite moments.”
“Like two doomed ships that pass in storm we had crossed each other's way: but we made no sign, we said no word, we had no word to say.”
“Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but molds it to its purpose.”
“Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. The nineteenth century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac.”
“London is full of women who trust their husbands. One can always recognize them. They look so thoroughly unhappy.”
“Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which is never advisable.”
“Looking good and dressing well is a necessity. Having a purpose in life is not.”
“LORD ILLINGWORTH: The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden. / MRS. ALLONBY: It ends with Revelations.”
“Lots of people act well, but few people talk well. This shows that talking is the more difficult of the two.”
“Man can believe the impossible, but can never believe the improbable”
“Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.”
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
“Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt.”
“Marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men disagree”
“Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.”
“Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.”
“Married men are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not”
“Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us”
“Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a mans last romance.”
“Men always want to be a woman's first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We woman have a more subtle instinct about things. What we like is to be a man's last romance.”
“Men become old, but they never become good”
“Men marry because they are tired, women because they are curious; both are disappointed.”
“Men of thoughts should have nothing to do with action”
“Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.”
“Misfortunes one can endure - they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's own faults - Ah! there is the sting of life.”
“Missionaries are going to reform the world whether it wants to or not”
“Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.”
“Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious, and their method too clearly defined.”
“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.”
“Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualification”
“Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.”
“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.”
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
“Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.”
“Mrs. Allonby: No man does. That is his.”
“Murder is always a mistake - one should never do anything one cannot talk about after dinner”
“Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory.”
“Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.”
“Musical people always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be perfectly deaf”
“My dear young lady, there was a great deal of truth, I dare say, in what you said, and you looked very pretty while you said it, which is much more important”
“My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.”
“My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.”
“My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people's”
“Nature is always behind the age”
“Never speak disrespectfully of Society. Only people who can't get into it do that.”
“Newspapers have degenerated. They may now be absolutely relied upon.”
“Newspapers. . . give us the bald, sordid, disgusting facts of life. They chronicle, with degrading avidity, the sins of the second-rate, and with the conscientiousness of the illiterate give us accurate and prosaic details. . .”
“No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.”
“No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime”
“No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did he would cease to be an artist.”
“No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.”
“No man is rich enough to buy back his past.”
“No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.”
“No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide. I can quite understand how any ordinary critic would be strongly prejudiced against a work that was accompanied by a premature and unnecessary panegyric from the publisher. A publisher is simply a useful middle-man. It is not for him to anticipate the verdict of criticism.”
“No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.”
“No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.”
“No, I am not at all cynical, I have merely got experience, which, however, is very much the same thing.”
“Nobody of any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of sunset. Sunsets are quite old fashioned. To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism of temperament. Upon the other hand they go on.”
“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”
“Nothing is good in moderation. You cannot know good in anything until you have torn the heart out of it by excess.”
“Nothing is impossible in Russia but reform.”
“Nothing is so aggravating as calmness.”
“Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.”
“Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly”
“Nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion.”
“Nothing makes one so vain as being told one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.”
“Nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude”
“Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman - or the want of it in the man”
“Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman”
“Nothing succeeds like success.”
“Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance”
“Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
“Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world.”
“Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.”
“Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes”
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
“Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.”
“Nowadays, all the married men live like bachelors, and all the bachelors like married men.”
“Of course America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.”
“Of course I have played outdoor games. I once played dominoes in an open air cafe in Paris.”
“Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.”
“Oh, duty is what one expects from others, it is not what one does oneself.”
“On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.”
“On refusing to make alterations to one of his plays: Who am I to tamper with a masterpiece?”
“On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American man is ever idle, and partly to the fact that no American wife is considered responsible for the quality of her husband's dinners.”
“Once can survive everything nowadays, except death.”
“One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.”
“One can always be kind to people one cares nothing about.”
“One can give a really unbiased opinion only about things that do not interest one”
“One can only give an unbiased opinion about things that do not interest one, which is no doubt the reason an unbiased opinion is always valueless. The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing.”
“One can survive everything nowadays, except death, and live down anything, except a good reputation.”
“One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.”
“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 brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.”
“One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.”
“One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.”
“One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.”
“One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.”
“One should never make one's debut in a scandal. One should reserve that to give interest to one's old age.”
“One should never trust a woman who tells her real age. If she tells that, she'll tell anything.”
“One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.”
“One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed.”
“One should play fairly when one has the winning cards”
“One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.”
“One's real life is often the life that one does not lead”
“One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.”
“Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.”
“Only my own genius.”
“Only people who look dull ever get into the House of Commons, and only people who are dull ever succeed there.”
“Only the shallow know themselves.”
“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.”
“Other people are quite dreadful./ The only possible society is oneself.”
“Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.”
“Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life”
“Pardon me, you are not engaged to any one. When you do become engaged to some one, I, or your father, should his health permit him, will inform you of the fact. An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be. It is hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself.”
“Passion makes one think in a circle.”
“Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.”
“People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.”
“People fashion their God after their own understanding. They make their God first and worship him afterwards.”
“People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all.”
“People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately”
“People who love only once in their lives are. . . shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.”
“Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it has merely been detected.”
“Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.”
“Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.”
“Philanthropy is the refuge of rich people who wish to annoy their fellow creatures.”
“Philanthropy seems to me to have become simply the refuge of people who wish to annoy their fellow creatures”
“Philosophy teaches us to bear with equanimity the misfortunes of others”
“Plain women are always jealous of their husbands. Beautiful women never are. They are always so occupied with being jealous of other women's husbands.”
“Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.”
“Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.”
“Pleasure is the only thing to live for. nothing ages like happiness.”
“Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry.”
“Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong.”
“Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered.”
“Popularity is the only insult that has not yet been offered to Mr. Whistler.”
“Private information is practically the source of every large modern fortune.”
“Public Opinion... an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force.”
“Put your talent into your work, but your genius into your life”
“Questions are never indiscreet: answers sometimes are”
“Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.”
“Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility.”
“Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die”
“Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief”
“Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.”
“Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.”
“Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.”
“Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.”
“Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality”
“Scepticism is the beginning of Faith.”
“Self denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity.”
“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”
“Seriousness is the last refuge of the shallow.”
“Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.”
“Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.”
“She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm.”
“She is a peacock in everything but beauty”
“She is absolutely inadmissible into society. Many a woman has a past, but I am told that she has at least a dozen, and that they all fit.”
“She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.”
“She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.”
“Simple pleasures are always the last refuge of the complex”
“Sins of the flesh are nothing. Sins of the soul are shameful.”
“Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.”
“Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.”
“Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another.”
“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go”
“Some of these people need ten years of therapy -ten sentences of mine do not equal ten years of therapy.”
“Something was dead in each of us,/ And what was dead was Hope.”
“Starvation, not sin, is the parent of modern crime”
“Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.”
“Sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of sympathy in the world, sympathy with pain does not really diminish the amount of pain.”
“Talk to a woman as if you loved her, and to a man as if he bored you.”
“Talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your first season you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact”
“Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it. To the great poet, there is only one method of music -- his own. To the great painter, there is only one manner of painting -- that which he himself employs. The aesthetic critic, and the aesthetic critic alone, can appreciate all forms and all modes. It is to him that Art makes her appeal.”
“Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic - a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.”
“That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.”
“The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.”
“The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.”
“The aim of love is to love: no more, and no less.”
“The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He is the very basis of civilized society.”
“The American father is never seen in London. He passes his life entirely in Wall Street and communicates with his family once a month by means of a telegram in cipher.”
“The Americans are certainly hero-worshippers, and always take their heroes from the criminal classes.”
“The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one's clean linen in public.”
“The basis of optimism is sheer terror.”
“The best one can say of modern creative art is that it is just a little less vulgar than reality.”
“The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.”
“The best way to make children good is to make them happy”
“The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.”
“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
“The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.”
“The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality”
“The cities of America are inexpressibly tedious. The Bostonians take their learning too sadly; culture with them is an accomplishment rather than an atmosphere; their ''Hub',' as they call it, is the paradise of prigs. Chicago is a sort of monster-shop, full of bustles and bores. Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry. Baltimore is amusing for a week, but Philadelphia is dreadfully provincial; and though one can dine in New York one could not dwell there.”
“The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.”
“The condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection is youth.”
“The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.”
“The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read”
“The English country gentleman galloping after a fox the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable”
“The English public, as a mass, takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral.”
“The evil that machinery is doing is not merely in the consequence of its work but in the fact that it makes men themselves machines also”
“The exquisite art of idleness, one of the most important things that any University can teach.”
“The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.”
“The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms.”
“The fact is, you have fallen lately, Cecily, into a bad habit of thinking for yourself. You should give it up. It is not quite womanly... men don't like it.”
“The final mystery is oneself.”
“The first duty of life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one as yet discovered.”
“The gaudy leonine sunflower Hangs black and barren on its stalk, And down the windy garden walk The dead leaves scatter,- hour by hour”
“The General was essentially a man of peace, except of course in his domestic affairs.”
“The gods bestowed on Max the gift of perpetual old age.”
“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”
“The Governor was strong upon/ The Regulations Act:/ The Doctor said that Death was but/ A scientific fact:/ And twice a day the Chaplain called,/ And left a little tract.”
“The great events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion.”
“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 passion 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 paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine.”
“The greatest of all sins is stupidity.”
“The heart was made to be broken”
“The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes.”
“The Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He s”
“The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.”
“The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all.”
“The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilized being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company”
“The longer I live the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us.”
“The man had killed the thing he loved, And so he had to die”
“The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.”
“The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him.”
“The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing”
“The mere mechanical technique of acting can be taught, but the spirit that is to give life to lifeless forms must be born in a man. No dramatic college can teach its pupils to think or to feel. It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.”
“The mind of a the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.”
“The modern sympathy with invalids is morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others.”
“The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.”
“The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.”
“The old believe everything; the middle aged suspect everything: the young know everything.”
“The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.”
“The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.”
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”
“The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action”
“The only beautiful things are the things that do not concern us.”
“The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer”
“The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”
“The only possible form of exercise is to talk, not to walk.”
“The only real people are the people who never existed”
“The only thing that ever consoles man for the stupid things he does is the praise he always gives himself for doing them.”
“The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result.”
“The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.”
“The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”
“The only way a woman can ever reform her husband is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life”
“The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to someone else, if she is plain.”
“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.”
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.”
“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.”
“The play was a great success but the audience was a disaster”
“The proper basis for marriage is mutual misunderstanding”
“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing”
“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.”
“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”
“The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.”
“The secret of life is in art.”
“The secret of life is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.”
“The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly deceived”
“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.”
“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.”
“The sign of a Philistine age is the cry of immorality against art.”
“The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy.”
“The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life.”
“The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.”
“The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful.”
“The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, women merely adored.”
“The supreme object of life is to live. Few people live. It is true life only to realize one's own perfection, to make one's every dream a reality.”
“The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young”
“The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.”
“The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”
“The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.”
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!”
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
“The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.”
“The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.”
“The value of an idea has nothing to do with the success of the man who expresses it”
“The value of an idea has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.”
“The vilest deeds like poison-weeds- Bloom well in prison-air: It is only what is good in Man - That wastes and withers there: Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate - And the Warden is Despair”
“The way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we must see it on the tight-rope. When the Verities become acrobats we can judge them.”
“The way of paradoxes is the way of truth.”
“The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.”
“The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence.”
“The world has been made by fools that men should live in it”
“The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.”
“The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.”
“The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.”
“The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork - Oscar Wilde”
“The worst form of tyranny the world has ever known the tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.”
“The worst vice of a fanatic is his sincerity.”
“The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.”
“There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.”
“There are moments when art attains almost to the dignity of manual labor.”
“There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating; people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.”
“There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”
“There are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to”
“There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.”
“There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope”
“There is always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies.”
“There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.”
“There is luxury in self reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.”
“There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”
“There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America.”
“There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.”
“There is no sin except stupidity.”
“There is no such thing as a good influence. Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtures are not real to him. His sins, if there are such thing as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.”
“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
“There is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.”
“There is no such thing as morality or immorality in thought. There is immoral emotion.”
“There is nothing in the whole world so unbecoming to a woman as a Nonconformist conscience.”
“There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.”
“There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.”
“There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.”
“There is only one real tragedy in a woman's life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future invariably her husband.”
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
“There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the color, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better.”
“There is something tragic about the enormous number of young men there are in England at the present moment who start life with perfect profiles, and end by adopting some useful profession.”
“These days man knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing.”
“They afterwards took me to a dancing saloon where I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across. Over the piano was printed a notice- 'Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.'”
“They are so pleased to find out other people's secrets. It distracts public attention from their own.”
“They flaunt their conjugal felicity in one's face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins.”
“They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever.”
“Things last either too long, or not long enough,”
“Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching. Our splendid physique as a people is entirely due to our national stupidity.”
“This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again.”
“This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.”
“Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.”
“Those who are faithless know the pleasures of love; it is the faithful who know love's tragedies”
“Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither.”
“Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob”
“Those whom the gods love grow young.”
“Though one can dine in New York, one could not dwell there.”
“Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night.”
“Time is waste of money.”
“To be entirely free, and at the same time, entirely dominated by law, is the eternal paradox of human life that we realise at every moment.”
“To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.”
“To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.”
“To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.”
“To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing.”
“To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity”
“To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual”
“To elope is cowardly; it is running away from danger; and danger has become so rare in modern life”
“To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.”
“To get back one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies”
“To get back to my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable”
“To get into the best society nowadays, one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people”
“To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.”
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
“To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
“To love one's self is the beginning of a life-long romance”
“To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance”
“To love yourself is the start of a lifetime romance.”
“To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist -- the problem is entirely the same in both cases. To know exactly how much oil one must put with one's vinegar.”
“To make men Socialists is nothing, but to make Socialism human is a great thing.”
“To many, no doubt, he will seem to be somewhat blatant and bumptious, but we prefer to regard him as being simply British.”
“To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders...It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.”
“To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.”
“To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim”
“To toil for a hard master is bitter, but to have no master to toil for is more bitter still”
“Tread lightly, she is near/ Under the snow,/ Speak gently, she can hear/ The daisies grow.”
“True friends stab you in the front.”
“Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived”
“Twenty years of romance makes a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building”
“Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation...”
“Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.”
“Vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people.”
“Vulgarity is the conduct of other people, just as falsehoods are the truths of other people”
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell”
“We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.”
“We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.”
“We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.”
“We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it. The public like to insult poets because they are individual, but once they have insulted them, they leave them alone.”
“We have little time and lots to do, lets take time for everything we do.”
“We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.”
“We Irish are too poetical to be poets; we are a nation of brilliant failures, but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks.”
“We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.”
“We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the brim / objects press around us, filling the mind with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death.”
“We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.”
“We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.”
“What a fuss people make about fidelity! Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say.”
“What between the duties expected of one during one's lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one's death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up. That's all that can be said about land.”
“What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
“What is mind but motion in the intellectual sphere?”
“What is said of a man is nothing. The point is, who says it.”
“What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colorless. By its curiosity Sin increases the experience of the race. Through its intensified assertion of individualism it saves us from monotony of type. In its rejection of the current notions about morality, it is one with the higher ethics.”
“What nonsense people talk about happy marriages! A man can be happy with any woman so long as he doesn't love her”
“What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities.”
“What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise”
“What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.”
“Whatever harsh criticisms may be passed on the construction of her sentences, she at least possesses that one touch of vulgarity that makes the whole world kin.”
“What's good for the country is good for General Motors, and vice versa.”
“When a love comes to an end, weaklings cry, efficient ones instantly find another love, and the wise already have one in reserve.”
“When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.”
“When a man is old enough to do wrong he should be old enough to do right also”
“When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.”
“When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.”
“When good Americans die they go to Paris.”
“When I think of all the harm the Bible has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it”
“When I was young, I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old, I know it is”
“When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.”
“When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what world calls a romance.”
“When one pays a visit it is for the purpose of wasting other people's time, not one's own.”
“When people talk to me about the weather, I always feel they mean something else.”
“When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.”
“When they reached the end of the room he stopped, and muttered some words she could not understand. She opened her eyes, and saw the wall slowly fading away like a mist, and a great black cavern in front of her. A bitter cold wind swept round them, and she felt something pulling at her dress. "Quick, quick," cried the Ghost, "or it will be too late," and, in a moment, the wainscoting had closed behind them, and the Tapestry Chamber was empty.”
“When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy.”
“Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.”
“Whenever cannibals are on the brink of starvation, Heaven, in its infinite mercy, sends them a nice plump missionary”
“Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.”
“Where there is no exaggeration there is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding. It is only about things that do not interest one, that one can give a really unbiased opinion. . .”
“Where there is no extravagance there is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding.”
“Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground”
“While one should always study the method of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely universal. The first is personality, which no one should copy;”
“While to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free, to the claims of conformity no man may yield and remain free at all”
“While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance”
“Who am I to tamper with a masterpiece?”
“Who is that man over there? I don't know him. What is he doing? Is he a conspirator? Have you searched him? Give him till tomorrow to confess, then hang him! -- hang him!”
“Who, being loved, is poor?”
“Why was I born with such contemporaries?”
“Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others”
“With an evening coat and a white tie, anybody, even a stockbroker, can gain a reputation for being civilized”
“Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.”
“Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends up blocking his retreat.”
“Woman's first duty in life is to her dressmaker. What the second duty is no one has yet discovered.”
“Women are made to be loved, not understood.”
“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”
“Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.”
“Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.”
“Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.”
“Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.”
“Wordsworth went to the Lakes, but he was never a lake poet. He found in stones the sermons he had already hidden there.”
“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.”
“Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do”
“Yes, I am a thorough republican. No other form of government is so favorable to the growth of art.”
“Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!”
“You are young. No hungry generations tread you down.... The past does not mock you with the ruins of a beauty the secret of whose creation you have lost...”
“You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.”
“You know what a woman's curiosity is”
“You should study the Peerage, Gerald. It is the one book a young man about town should know thoroughly, and it is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done.”
“Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot.”
“Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything, and when they grow older, they know it”
“Youth! There is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in Life's lumber-room. But youth is the Lord of Life. Youth has a kingdom waiting for it. Every one is born a king, and most people die in exile.”

- Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

Advice From The Wise

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (Oscar Wilde)

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