Quotes by Authors - Page 5156

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.
Oscar Wilde
I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else.
Oscar Wilde
Why can't these American women stay in their own country? They are always telling us that it is the paradise for women.It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it.
Oscar Wilde
Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything.Yes, murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-hole in his coat; and when they grow older they know it.
Oscar Wilde
Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.
Oscar Wilde
Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
Oscar Wilde
If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want.
Oscar Wilde
The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.
Oscar Wilde
In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.
Oscar Wilde
It is perfectly monstrous,' he said, at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.
Oscar Wilde
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
Oscar Wilde
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
Oscar Wilde
Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.
Oscar Wilde
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
Oscar Wilde
The world is a stage and the play is badly cast.
Oscar Wilde
I like men who have a future and women who have a past.
Oscar Wilde
No good deed goes unpunished.
Oscar Wilde
I have nothing to declare except my genius.
Oscar Wilde
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Oscar Wilde
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
Oscar Wilde
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
Oscar Wilde
I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
Oscar Wilde
Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.
Oscar Wilde
What fire does not destroy, it hardens
Oscar Wilde
But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.
Oscar Wilde
A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
Oscar Wilde
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Oscar Wilde
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Oscar Wilde
Imagination is a quality that was given to man compensate him from whats not. The sense of humor was given to console him from what is.
Oscar Wilde
I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life.
Oscar Wilde
Now I've gone for too longLiving like I'm not aliveSo I'm going to start over tonightBeginning with you and I
Oscar Wilde
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 own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.
Oscar Wilde
The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.
Oscar Wilde
Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.
Oscar Wilde
I won't tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world's voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely—or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose!
Oscar Wilde
The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.
Oscar Wilde
Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
Oscar Wilde
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
Oscar Wilde
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Oscar Wilde
When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy.
Oscar Wilde
My life-my whole life- take it, and do with it what you will. I love you-love you as I have never loved any living thing. From the moment I met you I loved you, loved you blindly, adoringly,madly!You didn't know it then-you know it now.
Oscar Wilde
A kiss may ruin a human life
Oscar Wilde
You have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvelous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid
Oscar Wilde
It takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it. And even more courage to see it in the one you love
Oscar Wilde
Hearts Live By Being Wounded
Oscar Wilde
I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If ever I get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.
Oscar Wilde
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 a richness to life that nothing else can bring.
Oscar Wilde
A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.
Oscar Wilde
One should always be in love. That's the reason one should never marry.
Oscar Wilde
Yet each man kills the thing he lovesBy each let this be heardSome do it with a bitter lookSome with a flattering wordThe coward does it with a kissThe brave man with a sword
Oscar Wilde
Who, being loved, is poor?
Oscar Wilde
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
Oscar Wilde
The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
Oscar Wilde
The heart was made to be broken.
Oscar Wilde
Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.
Oscar Wilde
Believe in yourself and all that you are. Know that there is something inside you that is greater than any obstacle.
Christian D. Larson
Promise YourselfTo be so strong that nothingcan disturb your peace of mind.To talk health, happiness, and prosperityto every person you meet.To make all your friends feelthat there is something in themTo look at the sunny side of everythingand make your optimism come true.To think only the best, to work only for the best,and to expect only the best.To be just as enthusiastic about the success of othersas you are about your own.To forget the mistakes of the pastand press on to the greater achievements of the future.To wear a cheerful countenance at all timesand give every living creature you meet a smile.To give so much time to the improvement of yourselfthat you have no time to criticize others.To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear,and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world,not in loud words but great deeds.To live in faith that the whole world is on your sideso long as you are true to the best that is in you.
Christian D. Larson
For once a hope was realized. I held in my hand a morsel of real solid joy: not a dream, not an image of the brain, not one of those shadowy chances imagination pictures, and on which humanity starves but cannot live
Charlotte Brontë
I think if Eternity held torment, its form would not be fiery rack, nor its nature, despair. I think that on a certain day amongst those days which never dawned, and will not set, an angel entered Hades — stood, shone, smiled, delivered a prophecy of conditional pardon, kindled a doubtful hope of bliss to come, not now, but at a day and hour unlooked for, revealed in his own glory and grandeur the height and compass of his promise: spoke thus — then towering, became a star, and vanished into his own Heaven. His legacy was suspense — a worse boon than despair.
Charlotte Brontë
...[M]y inner self moved; my spirit shook its always-fettered wings half loose. I had a sudden feeling as if I, who never yet truly lived, were at last about to taste life.
Charlotte Brontë