Oscar Wilde Quotes - Page 3

I love to talk about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about.
Oscar Wilde
Everything is going to be fine in the end. If it's not fine it's not the end.
Oscar Wilde
It is only about things that do not interest one, that one can give a really unbiassed opinion; and this is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always valueless.
Oscar Wilde
For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it.
Oscar Wilde
Journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarist.
Oscar Wilde
There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch of the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.
Oscar Wilde
By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
Oscar Wilde
One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.
Oscar Wilde
JACK.I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.ALGERNON.We have.JACK.I should extremely like to meet them. What do they talk about?ALGERNON.The fools? Oh! about the clever people, of course.JACK.What fools!
Oscar Wilde
Deliver me from my disciples!
Oscar Wilde
The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork.
Oscar Wilde
A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.
Oscar Wilde
Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable
Oscar Wilde
Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.
Oscar Wilde
The 19thc hatred of Realism is Caliban's enraged reaction to seeing his own face in the mirror. The 19thc rejection of Romanticism is Caliban's fury at not seeing his face reflected in the mirror.
Oscar Wilde
Lady Bracknell. Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well.Algernon. I’m feeling very well, Aunt Augusta.Lady Bracknell. That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.
Oscar Wilde
The Number our envious Persons, confirmation our capability.
Oscar Wilde
I cannot choose one hundred best books because I have only written five
Oscar Wilde
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool.
Oscar Wilde
A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me.
Oscar Wilde
I could deny it if I liked. I could deny anything if I liked.
Oscar Wilde
Intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing.
Oscar Wilde
it is a marvel that those red-roseleaf lips of yours should be made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing.
Oscar Wilde
They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about.
Oscar Wilde
The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism – are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life – educated men who live in the East End – coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.
Oscar Wilde
I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.
Oscar Wilde
Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood
Oscar Wilde
One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
Oscar Wilde
JACK: I will be back in a few moments, dear Canon. Gwendolen! Wait here for me!GWENDOLEN: If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.
Oscar Wilde
After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.
Oscar Wilde
Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. It is a meaningless word, too.
Oscar Wilde
Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given away. The ruby shall be redder than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as the great sea.
Oscar Wilde
I must confess that most modern mysticism seems to me to be simply a method of imparting useless knowledge in a form that no one can understand
Oscar Wilde
Alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, may produce all the effects of drunkenness.
Oscar Wilde
Bosie has insisted on stopping here for sandwiches. He is quite like a narcissus -- so white and gold. I will come either Wednesday or Thursday night to your rooms. Send me a line. Bosie is so tired: he lies like a hyacinth on the sofa, and I worship him. (letter from Oscar Wilde, 1892 - quoted from Love in a dark time by Colm Toibin)
Oscar Wilde
So the swallow flew over the great city, and saw the rich making merry in their beautiful houses, while the beggars were sitting at the gates. He flew into dark lanes, and saw the white faces of starving children looking out listlessly at the black streets...
Oscar Wilde
There are works which wait, and which one does not understand for a long time; the reason is that they bring answers to questions which have not yet been raised; for the question often arrives a terribly long time after the answer.
Oscar Wilde
I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
Oscar Wilde
And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.
Oscar Wilde
Niagara ... is the first disappointment in the married life of many Americans who spend their honeymoon there.
Oscar Wilde
For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses.
Oscar Wilde
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
Oscar Wilde
Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.
Oscar Wilde
Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that
Oscar Wilde
Yet ruled he not long, so great had been his suffering, and so bitter the fire of his testing, for after the space of three years he died. And he who came after him ruled evilly.
Oscar Wilde
Do you want to kill his love for you? What sort of existence will he have if you rob him of the fruits of his ambition, if you take him from the splendour of a great political career, if you close the doors of public life against him, if you condemn him to sterile failure, he who was made for triumph and success? Women are not meant to judge us but to forgive us when we need forgiveness. Pardon, not punishment, is their mission. Why should you scourge him with rods for a sin done in his youth, before he knew you, before he knew himself? A man's life is of more value than a woman's. It has larger issues, wider scope, greater ambitions. A women's life revolves around curves of emotions. It is upon lines of intellect that man's life progresses. Don't make any terrible mistake, Lady Chiltern. A woman who can keep a man's love, and love him in return, has done all the world wants of women, or should want of them.
Oscar Wilde
The pure and simple truth is, the truth is never pure and simple.
Oscar Wilde
No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.
Oscar Wilde
Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.Vice and virtue are the artist’s materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feelings, the actor’s craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectators, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Oscar Wilde
He was a man of most subtle and refined intellect. A man of culture, charm, and distinction. One of the most intellectual men I ever met.""I prefer a gentlemanly fool any day. There is more to be said for stupidity than people imagine. Personally I have a great admiration for stupidity. It is a sort of fellow-feeling, I suppose.
Oscar Wilde
the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failure. a
Oscar Wilde
The drawback of stealing a thing, is that one never knows how wonderful the thing that one steals is.
Oscar Wilde
Marriage is a matter for common sense.""But women who have common sense are so curiously plain, father, aren't they? Of course I only speak from heresay?""No woman, plain or pretty, has any common sense at all, sir. Common sense is the privilege of our sex.
Oscar Wilde
For his mourners will be outcast menAnd outcasts always mourn...
Oscar Wilde
Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it.
Oscar Wilde
She lives the poetry she cannot write.
Oscar Wilde
He repeated her name over and over again. The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.
Oscar Wilde
I will love you always, because you will always be worthy of love.
Oscar Wilde
I love talking about nothing, father. It is the only thing I know anything about.
Oscar Wilde
Indeed, as a rule, everybody turns out to be somebody else.
Oscar Wilde