Oscar Wilde Quotes - Page 6

The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.
Oscar Wilde
Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.
Oscar Wilde
All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect by creating, or at any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and individualism that is to kill it. When it is used with a certain amount of kindness, and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully demoralising. People, in that case, are less conscious of the horrible pressure that is being put on them, and so go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realising that they are probably thinking other people's thoughts, living by other people's standards, wearing practically what one may call other people's second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment.
Oscar Wilde
Every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character.
Oscar Wilde
It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never put one's worship into words.
Oscar Wilde
It is very difficult sometimes to keep awake, especially at church, but there is no difficulty at all about sleeping.
Oscar Wilde
We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.
Oscar Wilde
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
Oscar Wilde
America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
Oscar Wilde
America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier in history than itself.
Oscar Wilde
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
Oscar Wilde
Albeit nurtured in democracy, And liking best that state republican Where every man is Kinglike and no manIs crowned above his fellows, yet I see,Spite of this modern fret for Liberty, Better the rule of One, whom all obey, Than to let clamorous demagogues betrayOur freedom with the kiss of anarchy.Wherefore I love them not whose hands profane Plant the red flag upon the piled-up street For no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reignArts, Culture, Reverence, Honor, all things fade, Save Treason and the dagger of her trade, Or Murder with his silent bloody fee.
Oscar Wilde
One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
Oscar Wilde
The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.
Oscar Wilde
Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art.
Oscar Wilde
you have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity.
Oscar Wilde
What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts.
Oscar Wilde
The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her latest wonder.
Oscar Wilde
Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.
Oscar Wilde
If I could get back my youth, I'd do anything in the world except get up early, take exercise or be respectable.
Oscar Wilde
But youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.
Oscar Wilde
The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.
Oscar Wilde
And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, 'You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.
Oscar Wilde
When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.
Oscar Wilde
If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart.
Oscar Wilde
Dear little Swallow,’ said the Prince, ‘you tell me of marvelous things, but more marvelous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery.
Oscar Wilde
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
Oscar Wilde
Most people live for love and admiration. But it is by love and admiration that one should live. If any love is shown us we should recognize that we are quite unworthy of it. Nobody is worthy to be loved... or if that phrase is a bitter one to bear, let us say that everyone is worthy of love, except him who thinks he is. Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling..
Oscar Wilde
The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure.
Oscar Wilde
The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole.
Oscar Wilde
If a woman cannot make her mistakes charming, she is only a female.
Oscar Wilde
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: … But may I ask, at heart, are you an optimist or a pessimist? Those seem to be the only two fashionable religions left to us nowadays.MRS CHEVELEY: Oh, I'm neither. Optimism begins in a broad grin, and Pessimism ends with blue spectacles. Besides, they are both of them merely poses.SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: You prefer to be natural?MRS CHEVELEY: Sometimes. But it is such a very difficult pose to keep up.(Act I., lines 132-140)
Oscar Wilde
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
Oscar Wilde
Every one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is asacrament that should be taken kneeling.
Oscar Wilde
loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin.
Oscar Wilde
the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.
Oscar Wilde
You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.
Oscar Wilde
Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.
Oscar Wilde
Because sometimes you have to do something bad to do something good.
Oscar Wilde
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Oscar Wilde
You are perfectly right in making some slight alteration. Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
Oscar Wilde
Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others. Health is the primary duty of life.
Oscar Wilde
One knows so well the popular idea of health: the English country gentleman galloping after a fox - the unspeakable in full pursuit of the unbeatable.
Oscar Wilde
You are unjust to women in England. And till you count what is a a shame in a woman to be an infamy in a man, you will always be unjust, and Right, that pillar of fire, and Wrong, that pillar of cloud, will be made dim to your eyes, or be not seen at all, or if seen, not regarded.
Oscar Wilde
One could never pay too high a price for any sensation.
Oscar Wilde
I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.
Oscar Wilde
The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Oscar Wilde
Ah! Happy they whose hearts can breakAnd peace of pardon win!How else may man make straight his pathAnd cleanse his soul from sin?How else but through a broken heartMay the Lord Christ enter in?
Oscar Wilde
Love does not traffic in a marketplace, nor use a huckster's scales. Its joy, like the joy of the intellect, is to feel itself alive. The aim of Love is to love: no more, and no less. You were my enemy: such an enemy as no man ever had. I had given you all my life, and to gratify the lowest and most contemptible of all human passions, hatred and vanity and greed, you had thrown it away. In less than three years you had entirely ruined me in every point of view. For my own sake there was nothing for me to do but to love you.
Oscar Wilde
And if life be, as it surely is, a problem to me, I am no less a problem to life.
Oscar Wilde
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde
The post on her left was occupied by Mr. Erskine of Treadley, an old gentleman of considerable charm and culture, who had fallen, however, into bad habits of silence, having, as he explained once to Lady Agatha, said everything that he had to say before he was thirty.
Oscar Wilde
I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.
Oscar Wilde
The best way to make children good is to make them happy.
Oscar Wilde
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.
Oscar Wilde
The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plentitude.
Oscar Wilde
Memory is the diary we all carry about with us.
Oscar Wilde
Morality does not help me. I am a born antinomian...I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does. I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes.
Oscar Wilde
Moral grounds are always the last refuge of people who have no sense of beauty.
Oscar Wilde
You come down here to console me. That is charming of you. You find me consoled, and you are furious. How like a sympathetic person!
Oscar Wilde