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Oh, I don't care about Jack. I don't care for anybody in the whole world but you. I love you, Cecily. You will marry me, won't you?You silly boy! Of course. Why, we have been engaged for the last three months.For the last three months? By Oscar Wilde Jack Care Cecily World Boy

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. By Oscar Wilde Giant Paradise Garden Today Child

You silly Arthur! If you knew anything about ... anything, which you don't, you would know that I adore you. Everyone in London knows it except you. It is a public scandal the way I adore you. I have been going about for the last six months telling the whole of society that I adore you. I wonder you consent to have anything to say to me. I have no character left at all. At least, I feel so happy that I am quite sure I have no character left at all. By Oscar Wilde Arthur Adore Silly Character Left

Art is rarely intelligible to the criminal classes. By Oscar Wilde Art Classes Rarely Intelligible Criminal

If there is anything more annoying in the world than having people talk about you, it is certainly having no one talk about you. By Oscar Wilde Talk Annoying World People

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. By Oscar Wilde Recreation Instruction Conversation Company Liar

I know a flower that grows in the valley, none knows it but I. It has purple leaves, and a star in its heart, and its juice is as white as milk. Should'st thou touch with this flower the hard lips of the Queen, she would follow thee all over the world. Out of the bed of the King she would rise, and over the whole world she would follow thee. And it has a price, pretty boy, it has a price. What d'ye lack? What d'ye lack? I can pound a toad in a mortar, and make broth of it, and stir the broth with a dead man's hand. Sprinkle it on thine enemy while he sleeps, and he will turn into a black viper, and his own mother will slay him. With a wheel I can draw the Moon from heaven, and in a crystal I can show thee Death. What d'ye lack? What d'ye lack? Tell me thy desire, and I will give it thee, and thou shalt pay me a price, pretty boy, thou shalt pay me a price. By Oscar Wilde Lack Price Dye Thee Valley

Gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent, blood-stained feet into his brain and reconstructed themselves there with terrible distinctness. He winced at the memory of all that he had suffered, and for a moment the same curious feeling of loathing for Basil Hallward that had made him kill him as he sat in the chair came back to him, and he grew cold with passion. The dead man was still sitting there, too, and in the sunlight now. How horrible that was! Such hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day. By Oscar Wilde Gradually Silent Bloodstained Distinctness Events

Thou knowest all; I seek in vainWhat lands to till or sow with seed -The land is black with briar and weed,Nor cares for falling tears or rain.Thou knowest all; I sit and waitWith blinded eyes and hands that fail,Till the last lifting of the veilAnd the first opening of the gate.Thou knowest all; I cannot see.I trust I shall not live in vain,I know that we shall meet againIn some divine eternity. By Oscar Wilde Knowest Thou Seed Eternity Seek

I can't explain. When I like people immensely, I never tell their names to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one's life. I suppose you think me awfully foolish about it? By Oscar Wilde Explain People Thing Life Immensely

The living always think that gold can make them happy By Oscar Wilde Happy Living Gold Make

Be happy, cried the Nightingale, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart's-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty. Flame-coloured are his wings, and coloured like flame is his body. His lips are sweet as honey, and his breath is like frankincense. By Oscar Wilde Happy Nightingale Cried Rose Red

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards. By Oscar Wilde Cards Play Fairly Winning

Your vanity is ridiculous, your conduct an outrage, and your presence in my garden utterly absurd By Oscar Wilde Ridiculous Outrage Absurd Vanity Conduct

I can quite understand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and admit of its accumulation, as long as he himself is able under those conditions to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life. But it is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance. By Oscar Wilde Property Accumulation Man Laws Life

I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones. By Oscar Wilde Friends

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. By Oscar Wilde Treadley Agatha Erskine Lady Culture

As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, 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. By Oscar Wilde History Passmen Time Sickened Committed

As one reads history ... one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted. By Oscar Wilde History Reads Sickened Committed Inflicted

I was obliged to call on dear Lady Harbury. I hadn't been there since her poor husband's death. I never saw a woman so altered; she looks quite twenty years younger. By Oscar Wilde Harbury Lady Obliged Call Dear

At last, liveried in the costume of the age, reality entered the room in the shape of a servant to tell the duchess that her carriage was waiting. She wrung her hands in mock despair. "How annoying!" she cried. "I must go. I have to call for my husband at the club, to take him to some absurd meeting at Willis's Rooms, where he is going to be in the chair. If I am late he is sure to be furious, and I couldn't have a scene in this bonnet. It is far too fragile. A harsh word would ruin it. No, I must go, dear Agatha. Good-bye, Lord Henry, you are quite delightful and dreadfully demoralizing. I am sure I don't know what to say about your views. You must come and dine with us some night. Tuesday? Are you disengaged Tuesday? By Oscar Wilde Liveried Age Reality Waiting Costume

To know anything about oneself one must know all about others. By Oscar Wilde Oneself

It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little. I discern great sanity in the Greek attitude. They never chattered about sunsets, or discussed whether the shadows on the grass were really mauve or not. But they saw that the sea was for the swimmer, and the sand for the feet of the runner. They loved the trees for the shadow that they cast, and the forest for its silence at noon. By Oscar Wilde Nature Live Greek Attitude Discern

The sea, as Euripides says in one of his plays about Iphigenia, washes away the stains and wounds of the world. By Oscar Wilde Iphigenia Euripides Sea Washes World

God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then - who knows? - rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too. By Oscar Wilde Oxford God Don Famous End

How English you are, Basil! If one putsforward an idea to a real Englishman, - always a rashthing to do, - he never dreams of considering whether theidea is right or wrong. The only thing he considers of anyimportance is whether one believes it one's self. Now, thevalue of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with thesincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, theprobabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case itwill not be colored by either his wants, his desires, or hisprejudices. However, I don't propose to discuss politics,sociology, or metaphysics with you. I like persons betterthan principles. Tell me more about Dorian Gray. Howoften do you see him? By Oscar Wilde Basil English Idea Englishman Man

Jack? ... No, there is very little music in the name Jack, if any at all, indeed. It does not thrill. It produces absolutely no vibrations ... I have known several Jacks, and they all, without exception, were more than usually plain. Besides, Jack is a notorious domesticity for John! And I pity any woman who is married to a man called John. She would probably never be allowed to know the entrancing pleasure of a single moment's solitude. The only really safe name is Ernest. By Oscar Wilde Jack John Ernest Jacks Thrill

Algernon. Then your wife will. You don't seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none. Jack. [Sententiously.] That, my dear young friend, is the theory that the corrupt French Drama has been propounding for the last fifty years. Algernon. Yes; and that the happy English home has proved in half the time. Jack. For heaven's sake, don't try to be cynical. It's perfectly easy to be cynical. Algernon. My dear fellow, it isn't easy to be anything nowadays. There's such a lot of beastly competition about. By Oscar Wilde Algernon Jack Cynical Sententiously Dear

I make a great difference between people. I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me? I think it is rather vain. By Oscar Wilde Good People Make Great Difference

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 virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things 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. By Oscar Wilde Soul Influence Person Give Natural

Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us. Yes, but it usually chronicles the things that have never happened, and couldn't possibly have happened. I believe that Memory is responsible for nearly all the three-volume novels that Mudie sends us. By Oscar Wilde Cecily Memory Happened Dear Diary

As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg By Oscar Wilde Beg Begging Safer Finer

People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion - these are the two things that govern us. And yet - By Oscar Wilde Nowadays People Afraid Terror Duties

My sweet rose, my delicate flower, my lily of lilies, it is perhaps in prison that I am going to test the power of love. I am going to see if I cannot make the bitter warders sweet by the intensity of the love I bear you. I have had moments when I thought it would be wise to separate. Ah! Moments of weakness and madness! Now I see that would have mutilated my life, ruined my art, broken the musical chords which make a perfect soul. Even covered with mud I shall praise you, from the deepest abysses I shall cry to you. In my solitude you will be with me. By Oscar Wilde Sweet Love Rose Flower Lilies

The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all ... One might point out how the Renaissance was great, because it sought to solve no social problem, and busied itself not about such things, but suffered the individual to develop freely, beautifully, and naturally, and so had great and individual artists, and great, individual men. One might point out how Louis XIV, by creating the modern state, destroyed the individualism of the artist ... By Oscar Wilde Government Great Individual Artist Point

Love is the sacrament of life; it sets Virtue where virtue was not; cleanses men Of all the vile pollutions of this world; It is the fire which purges gold from dross, It is the fan which winnows wheat from chaff, It is the spring which in some wintry soil Makes innocence to blossom like a rose. The days are over when God walked with men, But Love, which is his image, holds his place. When a man loves a woman, then he knows God's secret, and the secret of the world. There is no house so lowly or so mean, Which, if their hearts be pure who live in it, Love will not enter; but if bloody murder Knock at the Palace gate and is let in, Love like a wounded thing creeps out and dies. This is the punishment God sets on sin. The wicked cannot love. By Oscar Wilde Virtue Love Makes God Men

In its primary aspect, a painting has no more spiritual message than an exquisite fragment of Venetian glass. The channels by which all noble and imaginative work in painting should touch the soul are not those of the truths of lives. By Oscar Wilde Venetian Aspect Glass Painting Primary

Yes, I am a thorough republican. No other form of government is so favorable to the growth of art ... because of the importance it places on the individual, their liberty, self-expression, creativity, and personal responsibility. By Oscar Wilde Republican Selfexpression Creativity Art Individual

As a rule, people who act lead the most commonplace lives. They are good husbands, or faithful wives, or something tedious...How different Sibyl was! She lived her finest tragedy. By Oscar Wilde Rule People Lives Act Lead

Life has everything in store for you, Dorian. There is nothing that you, with your extraordinary good looks, will not be able to do.""But suppose, Harry, I became haggard, and old, and wrinkled? What then?""Ah, then," said Lord Henry, rising to go, "then, my dear Dorian, you would have to fight for your victories. As it is, they are brought to you. No, you must keep your good looks. We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful. We cannot spare you." (8.19) By Oscar Wilde Dorian Life Harry Store Good

Don't change, Dorian; at any rate, don't change to me. We must always be friends." "Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to anyone. It does harm." "My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralise. You will soon be going about warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired. You are much too delightful to do that. Besides, it is no use. You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be. By Oscar Wilde Dorian Change Rate Book Friends

In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances, invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth. By Oscar Wilde England Inventor Man Instances Invention

The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one's heart - hearts are made to be broken - but that it turns one's heart to stone. By Oscar Wilde Heart Broken Stone Terrible Thing

At least,I have not made my heart a heart of stone,Nor starved my boyhood of is goodly feast,Nor walked where beauty is a thing unknown. By Oscar Wilde Unknown Heart Leasti Made Stonenor

It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in suchan inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, theirabsolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lackof style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give usan impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that.Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements ofbeauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, thewhole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenlywe find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of theplay. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonderof the spectacle enthralls us. By Oscar Wilde Violence Theirabsolute Incoherence Meaning Style

My dear boy, 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 intellectsimply a confession of failures. Faithfulness! I must analyse it some day. The passion for property is in it. There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up. But I don't want to interrupt you. Go on with your story. By Oscar Wilde People Boy Dear Love Lives

MRS. ALLONBY. Curious thing, plain women are always jealous of their husbands, beautiful women never are!LORD ILLINGWORTH. Beautiful women never have time. They are always so occupied in being jealous of other people's husbands. By Oscar Wilde Mrs Allonby Women Beautiful Husbands

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. By Oscar Wilde Plain Husbands Women Jealous Beautiful

What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than begin talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion. By Oscar Wilde Odd Chaps Painters Men World

An entirely new factor has appeared in the social development of the country, and this factor is the Irish-American, and his influence. To mature its powers, to concentrate its action, to learn the secret of its own strength and of England's weakness, the Celtic intellect has had to cross the Atlantic. At home it had but learned the pathetic weakness of nationality; in a strange land it realised what indomitable forces nationality possesses. What captivity was to the Jews, exile has been to the Irish: America and American influence have educated them. By Oscar Wilde Factor Country Irishamerican Appeared Social

I'm so smart, I read and understand Hegel By Oscar Wilde Hegel Smart Read Understand

He played with the idea, and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy, and Philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of Pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. Facts fled before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod the huge press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over the vat's black, dripping, sloping sides. By Oscar Wilde Fancy Idea Wilful Tossed Made

They've promised that dreams can come true - but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too. By Oscar Wilde True Dreams Promised Forgot Mention

Surely Love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the marketplace. It may not be purchased of the merchants, for can it be weighed out in the balance for gold. By Oscar Wilde Love Surely Thing Wonderful Emeralds

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame. By Oscar Wilde Complete Beauty Lesson Work Art

Mi bella Princesa, your funny little dwarf will never dance again. It is a pity, for he is so ugly that he might have made the King smile.''But why will he not dance again?' asked the Infanta, laughing.'Because his heart is broken,' answered the Chamberlain.And the Infanta frowned, and her dainty rose-leaf lips curled in pretty disdain. 'For the future let those who come to play with me have no hearts,' she cried, and she ran out into the garden. By Oscar Wilde Princesa Dance Infanta Bella Funny

After the first glass of absinthe you see things as you wish they were. After the second you see them as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world. I mean disassociated. Take a top hat. You think you see it as it really is. But you don't because you associate it with other things and ideas.If you had never heard of one before, and suddenly saw it alone, you'd be frightened, or you'd laugh. That is the effect absinthe has, and that is why it drives men mad. Three nights I sat up all night drinking absinthe, and thinking that I was singularly clear-headed and sane. The waiter came in and began watering the sawdust.The most wonderful flowers, tulips, lilies and roses, sprang up, and made a garden in the cafe. "Don't you see them?" I said to him. "Mais non, monsieur, il n'y a rien. By Oscar Wilde Things Glass Absinthe Thing Mais

I love you, I love you, my heart is a rose which your love has brought to bloom, my life is a desert fanned by the delicious breeze of your breath, and whose cool spring are your eyes; the imprint of your little feet makes valleys of shade for me, the odour of your hair is like myrrh, and wherever you go you exhale the perfumes of the cassia tree.Love me always, love me always. You have been the supreme, the perfect love of my life; there can be no other ... By Oscar Wilde Love Life Bloom Breath Eyes

Death is a great price to pay for a red rose", cried the Nightingale, "and Life is very dear to all. " It is pleasant to sit in the green wood, and watch the Sun in his chariot of gold, and the Moon in her chariot of pearl. Sweet is the scent oft he hawthorn, and sweet are the bluebells that hide in the valley, and the heather that blows on the hill. Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man? By Oscar Wilde Nightingale Life Death Rose Cried

Be happy, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart's-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty. By Oscar Wilde Happy Rose Red Philosophy Power

The Noblest form of Affection By Oscar Wilde Affection Noblest Form

The portrait that Basil Hallward had painted of him would be a guide to him through life, would be to him what holiness is to some, and conscience to others, and the fear of God to us all. There were opiates for remorse, drugs that could lull the moral sense to sleep. But here was a visible symbol of the degradation of sin. Here was an ever-present sign of the ruin men brought upon their souls. By Oscar Wilde Basil Hallward God Life Portrait

I am not in favour of this modern mania for turning bad people into good people at a moment's notice. By Oscar Wilde Notice People Favour Modern Mania

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. The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer. By Oscar Wilde Word Caprice Dreadful Women Shudder

God and other artists are always a little obscure ... By Oscar Wilde God Obscure Artists

The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster. By Oscar Wilde Success Disaster Play Great Audience

But I think it will bring you something besides this, something that is the knowledge of real strength in art: not that you should imitate the works of these men; but their artistic spirit, their artistic attitude, I think you should absorb that. By Oscar Wilde Artistic Art Men Spirit Attitude

Then there was a man who said, 'I never knew what real happiness was until I got married; by then it was too late' By Oscar Wilde Married Late Man Knew Real

What are the unreal things, but the passions that once burned one like fire? What are the incredible things, but the things that one has faithfully believed? What are the improbable things? The things that one has done oneself. No, Ernest; life cheats us with shadows, like a puppet- master. We ask it for pleasure. It gives it to us, with bitterness and disappointment in its train. We come across some noble grief that we think will lend the purple dignity of tragedy to our days, but it passes away from us, and things less noble take its place, and on some grey windy dawn, or odorous eve of silence and of silver, we find ourselves looking with callous wonder, or dull heart of stone, at the tress of gold-flecked hair that we had once so wildly worshipped and so madly kissed. By Oscar Wilde Things Fire Unreal Passions Burned

[Letter to William Ward, 11 July 1878]Dear Boy, Why don't you write to me? I don't know what has become of you.As for me I am ruined. The law suit is going against me and I am afraid I will have to pay costs, which means leaving Oxford and doing some horrid work to earn bread. The world is too much for me.However, I have seen Greece and had some golden days of youth. I go back to Oxford immediately for viva voce and then think of rowing up the river to town with Frank Miles. Will you come? YoursOscar By Oscar Wilde July Letter Ward Dear Boy

Love is fed by the imagination, by which we become wiser than we know, better than we feel, nobler than we are: by which we can see life as a whole, by which and by which alone we can understand others in their real and their ideal relation. Only what is fine, and finely conceived can feed love. But anything will feed hate. By Oscar Wilde Imagination Feel Nobler Relation Love

The ugly and 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. They live as we all should live undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They never bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Henry; my brains, such as they are my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly. By Oscar Wilde World Ugly Stupid Live Suffer

In war," answered the weaver, "the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor. We must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die. We toil for them all day long, and they heap up gold in their coffers, and our children fade away before their time, and the faces of those we love become hard and evil. We tread out the grapes, another drinks the wine. We sow the corn, and our own board is empty. We have chains, though no eye beholds them; and are slaves, though men call us free. By Oscar Wilde Make Slaves War Answered Weaver

Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which is never advisable. By Oscar Wilde Long Marriage Advisable Engagements Give

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. By Oscar Wilde Life Man Love Kill Women

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 personality, which no one should copy. By Oscar Wilde Artist Method Manner Study Great

You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter - a girl brought up with the utmost care - to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel? By Oscar Wilde Lord Bracknell Daughter Care Cloakroom

You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want? By Oscar Wilde Cigarette Perfect Pleasure Exquisite Unsatisfied

Do you really keep a diary? I'd give anything to look at it. May I?Oh, no. You see, it is simply a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form I hope you will order a copy. By Oscar Wilde Diary Give Impressions Publication Copy

A strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come between them ... His eyes darkened, and the crowded, flaring streets became blurred to his eyes. When the cab drew up at the theatre, it seemed to him that he had grown years older. By Oscar Wilde Strange Sense Loss Dorian Gray

She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. By Oscar Wilde Great Heroines World Love Make

What is the good of friendship if one cannot say exactly what one means? By Oscar Wilde Good Friendship

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 Oscar Wilde Friendship True Friend Good Things

When both a speaker and an audience are confused, the speech is profound. By Oscar Wilde Confused Profound Speaker Audience Speech

We Irish are too poetical to be poets; we are a nation of brilliant failures, but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks. By Oscar Wilde Greeks Irish Poets Failures Poetical

Nature is no great mother who has home us. She is our own creation. It is in our brain that she quickens to life. Things are because we see them, and what we see and how we see it depends on the arts that have influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. By Oscar Wilde Nature Great Mother Home Thing

Cold were the lips, yet he kissed them. Salt was the honey of the hair, yet he tasted it with a bitter joy. He kissed the closed eyelids, and the wild spray that lay upon their cups was less salt than his tears. And to the dead thing he made confession. Into the shells of its ears he poured the harsh wine of his tale. He put the little hands round his neck, and with his fingers he touched the thin reed of the throat. Bitter, bitter was his joy, and full of strange gladness was his pain. By Oscar Wilde Cold Lips Kissed Bitter Salt

Schools should be the most beautiful place in every town and village-so beautiful that the punishment for undutiful children should be barred from going to school the following day. By Oscar Wilde Beautiful Day Place Town Villageso

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. By Oscar Wilde Caliban Glass Nineteenth Century Dislike

With an evening coat and a white tie, as you told me once, anybody, even a stock-broker, can gain a reputation for being civilized. By Oscar Wilde Tie Stockbroker Civilized Evening Coat

The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth. By Oscar Wilde Wither Common Hillflowers Blossom June

Do you mean to say you have had my cigarette case all this time? I wish to goodness you had let me know. I have been writing frantic letters to Scotland Yard about it. I was very nearly offering a large reward. Algernon. Well, I wish you would offer one. I happen to be more than usually hard up. By Oscar Wilde Time Cigarette Case Scotland Yard

Even if I had not been waiting but had shut the doors against you, you should have remembered that no one can possibly shut the doors against love forever. By Oscar Wilde Doors Shut Forever Waiting Remembered

When I went to America I had two secretaries, one for autographs, one for locks of hair. Within six months the one had died of writer's cramp, the other was completely bald. By Oscar Wilde America Secretaries Autographs Hair Locks

My heart stole back across wide wastes of years To One who wandered by a lonely sea, And sought in vain for any place of rest: 'Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest. I, only I, must wander wearily, And bruise my feet, and drink wine salt with tears.' Poem: By Oscar Wilde Foxes Sea Rest Holes Nest

The silver trumpets rang across the Dome;The people knelt upon the ground with awe;And borne upon the necks of men I saw,Like some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome.Priest-like, he wore a robe more white than foam,And, king-like, swathed himself in royal red,Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head;In splendour and in light the Pope passed home.My heart stole back across wide wastes of yearsTo One who wandered by a lonely sea;And sought in vain for any place of rest:Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest,I, only I, must wander wearily,And bruise my feet, and drink wine salt with tears. By Oscar Wilde Dome God Foxes Kinglike Holy

I would sooner lose my best friend than my worst enemy. To have friends, you know, one need only be good-natured; but when a man has no enemy left there must be something mean about him. By Oscar Wilde Enemy Sooner Lose Worst Goodnatured

You taught me what reality really is. To-night, for the first time in my life, I saw through the hollowness, the sham, the silliness of the empty pageant in which I had always played. To-night, for the first time, I became conscious that the Romeo was hideous, and old, and painted, that the moonlight in the orchard was false, that the scenery was vulgar, and that the words I had to speak were unreal, were not my words, were not what I wanted to say. By Oscar Wilde Tonight Taught Reality Time Words

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 By Oscar Wilde Man Sword Kills Thing Lovesby

Children start out loving their parents, but as they grow older and discover their parents are human, they become judgmental. And sometimes, when they mature, they forgive their parents, especially when they discover they are also human. By Oscar Wilde Parents Human Children Judgmental Discover

Don't run down dyed hair and painted faces. There is an extraordinary charm in them, sometimes. By Oscar Wilde Faces Run Dyed Hair Painted

The youth of the present day are quite monstrous. They have absolutely no respect for dyed hair. By Oscar Wilde Monstrous Youth Present Day Hair

If God really wanted to punish, he'd answer all our prayers. By Oscar Wilde God Punish Prayers Wanted Answer

I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that when one loses one's good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. Your picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself. By Oscar Wilde Faun Hermes Ivory Silver Loses

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 By Oscar Wilde Love Killed Stir Imagination Curiosity

He remembered with what callousness he had watched her. By Oscar Wilde Remembered Callousness Watched

It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves. By Oscar Wilde Experimenting Happened Thought

This is that CONSOLATION DES ARTS which is the key-note of Gautier's poetry, the secret of modern life foreshadowed - as indeed what in our century is not? - by Goethe. You remember what he said to the German people: 'Only have the courage,' he said, 'to give yourselves up to your impressions, allow yourselves to be delighted, moved, elevated, nay instructed, inspired for something great.' The courage to give yourselves up to your impressions: yes, that is the secret of the artistic life - for while art has been defined as an escape from the tyranny of the senses, it is an escape rather from the tyranny of the soul. But only to those who worship her above all things does she ever reveal her true treasure: else will she be as powerless to aid you as the mutilated Venus of the Louvre was before the romantic but sceptical nature of Heine. By Oscar Wilde Consolation Des Gautier Poetry Foreshadowed

For the various spiritual forms of the imagination have a natural affinity with certain sensuous forms of art - and to discern the qualities of each art, to intensify as well its limitations as its powers of expression, is one of the aims that culture sets before us. It is not an increased moral sense, an increased moral supervision that your literature needs. Indeed, one should never talk of a moral or an immoral poem - poems are either well written or badly written, that is all. And, indeed, any element of morals or implied reference to a standard of good or evil in art is often a sign of a certain incompleteness of vision, often a note of discord in the harmony of an imaginative creation; for all good work aims at a purely artistic effect. 'We must be careful,' said Goethe, 'not to be always looking for culture merely in what is obviously moral. Everything that is great promotes civilisation as soon as we are aware of it. By Oscar Wilde Forms Moral Art Increased Expression

And all men kill the thing they love, By all 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!"Ballad of Reading Gaol, 1898 By Oscar Wilde Ballad Gaol Reading Love Kiss

I don't think that you should tell me that you love me wildly, passionately, devotedly, hopelessly. Hopelessly doesn't seem to make much sense, does it? By Oscar Wilde Passionately Devotedly Hopelessly Wildly Love

It was winter, and a night of bitter cold. The snow lay thick upon the ground, and upon the branches of the trees: the frost kept snapping the little twigs on either side of them, as they passed: and when they came to the Mountain-Torrent she was hanging motionless in air, for the Ice-King had kissed her. By Oscar Wilde Winter Cold Night Bitter Ground

Why should I not love her? Harry, I do love her. She is everything to me in life. Night after night I go to see her play. One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen. I have seen her die in the gloom of an Italian Tomb, sucking the poison from her lover's lips. I have watched her wandering through the forest of Arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. She has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, and given him rue to wear, and bitter herbs to taste of. She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reed-like throat. I have seen her in every age and in every costume. Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination. They are limited to their century. No glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in one of them. By Oscar Wilde Love Evening Night Harry Rosalind

She is everything to me in life. Night after night I go to see her play. One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen. I have seen her the in the gloom of an Italian tomb, sucking the poison from her lover's lips. I have watched her wandering through the forest of Arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. She has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, and given him rue to wear, and bitter herbs to taste of. She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reed-like throat. I have seen her in every age and in every costume. Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination. They are limited to their century. No glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in any of them: By Oscar Wilde Life Night Evening Rosalind Imogen

Remember that the fool in the eyes of the gods and the fool in the eyes of man are very different. One who is entirely ignorant of the modes of Art in its revolution or the moods of thought in its progress, of the pomp of the Latin line or the richer music of the vowelled Greeks, of Tuscan sculpture or Elizabethan song may yet be full of the very sweetest wisdom. The real fool, such as the gods mock or mar, is he who does not know himself. I was such a one too long. You have been such a one too long. Be so no more. Do not be afraid. The supreme vice is shallowness. Everything that is realised is right By Oscar Wilde Eyes Fool Gods Remember Man

You have crushed the grapes against your palate. Nothing has been hidden from you. And it has all been to you no more than the sound of music. It has not marred you. By Oscar Wilde Palate Crushed Grapes Hidden Music

He was to be a nice sheep-farmer, and one evening, as he was riding home, he was to see the beautiful heiress being carried off by a robber on a black horse, and give chase, and rescue her. Of course, she would fall in love with him, and he with her, and they would get married, and come home, and live in an immense house in London. Yes, By Oscar Wilde Home Sheepfarmer Evening Horse Chase

Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation, and conversation must have a common basis, and between two people of widely different culture the only common basis possible is the lowest level. By Oscar Wilde Common Basis Conversation Ultimately Companionship

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. By Oscar Wilde Culture Reverence Honor Liberty Save

There is no feeling more comforting and consoling than knowing you are right next to the one you love. By Oscar Wilde Love Feeling Comforting Consoling Knowing

My sermon on the meaning of the manna in the wilderness can be adapted to almost any occasion, joyful, or, as in the present case, distressing. [All sigh.] I have preached it at harvest celebrations, christenings, confirmations, on days of humiliation and festal days. By Oscar Wilde Joyful Distressing Occasion Case Sermon

I remember your saying once that there is a fatality about good resolutions - that they are always made too late. Mine certainly were. By Oscar Wilde Resolutions Late Remember Fatality Good

Dammit Sir, it's your duty to get married. You can't always be living for pleasure! By Oscar Wilde Sir Dammit Married Duty Pleasure

paused for a moment, and a wild feeling of pity came over him. After all, what right had he to pry into the life of Dorian Gray? If he had done a tithe of what was rumoured about him, how much he must have suffered! Then he straightened himself up, and walked over to the fire-place, and stood there, By Oscar Wilde Paused Moment Wild Feeling Pity

My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals. By Oscar Wilde Boy Genius Women Triumph Dear

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 virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to oneself. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion these are the two things that govern us. By Oscar Wilde Natural Influence Person Give Sins

Yes; poor Bunbury is a dreadful invalid.Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shillyshallying with the question is absurd. By Oscar Wilde Algernon Bunbury Poor Invalidwell Die

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. By Oscar Wilde Bracknell Lady Algernon Aunt Good

I may have said the same thing before ... but my explanation, I am sure, will always be different. By Oscar Wilde Thing Explanation

With beat of systole and of diastole One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart, And mighty waves of single Being roll From nerveless germ to man, for we are part Of every rock and bird and beast and hill, One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill. From By Oscar Wilde Heart Man Hill Kill Beat

Pleasures may turn a heart to stone, riches may make it callous, but sorrows cannot break it. Hearts live by being wounded. By Oscar Wilde Pleasures Stone Riches Callous Turn

Cecily: "Miss Prism says that all good looks are a snare"Algernon: "They are a snare that every sensible man would like to be caught in."Cecily: "Oh, I don't think I would care to catch a sensible man. I shouldn't know what to talk to him about. By Oscar Wilde Cecily Algernon Miss Snare Man

Selfishness is not living your life as you wish to live it. Selfishness is wanting others to live their lives as you wish them to. By Oscar Wilde Selfishness Live Living Life Lives

The next morning, when the Otis family met at breakfast, they discussed the ghost at some length. The United States Minister was naturally a little annoyed to find that his present had not been accepted. "I have no wish," he said, "to do the ghost any personal injury, and I must say that, considering the length of time he has been in the house, I don't think it is at all polite to throw pillows at him" - a very just remark, at which, I am sorry to say, the twins burst into shouts of laughter. "Upon the other hand," he continued, "if he really declines to use the Rising Sun Lubricator, we shall have to take his chains from him. It would be quite impossible to sleep, with such a noise going on outside the bedrooms. By Oscar Wilde Otis Morning Breakfast Ghost Family

I am not a Pessimist. Indeed I am not sure that I quite know what Pessimism really means. All I do know is that life cannot be understood without much charity, it cannot be lived without much charity. It is love, and not German philosophy, that is the true explanation of this world, whatever may be the explanation of the next. By Oscar Wilde Pessimist Charity Pessimism Explanation German

Sonnet to LibertyNOT that I love thy children, whose dull eyes See nothing save their own unlovely woe, Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know, - But that the roar of thy Democracies, Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies, 5Mirror my wildest passions like the sea, - And give my rage a brother - ! Liberty! For this sake only do thy dissonant cries Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades 10Rob nations of their rights inviolate And I remain unmoved - and yet, and yet, These Christs that die upon the barricades, God knows it I am with them, in some things. By Oscar Wilde Liberty Democracies Terror Anarchies Thy

The worst of it is that I am perpetually being punished for nothing; this governor loves to punish, and he punishes by taking my books away from me. It's perfectly awful to let the mind grind itself away between the upper and nether millstones of regret and remorse without respite; with books my life would be livable any life. By Oscar Wilde Punish Books Worst Perpetually Punished

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. By Oscar Wilde Niagara Disappointed American People Earliest

It would be more impressive if it flowed the other way (Commenting on Niagara Falls) By Oscar Wilde Commenting Falls Niagara Impressive Flowed

Niagara ... is the first disappointment in the married life of many Americans who spend their honeymoon there. By Oscar Wilde Niagara Americans Disappointment Married Life

Niagara Falls is simply a vast unnecessary amount of water going over the wrong way and then falling over unnecessary cliffs ... The wonder would be if the water did not fall. By Oscar Wilde Unnecessary Niagara Cliffs Water Simply

In the square below,' said the Happy Prince, 'there stands a little match-girl. She has let her matches fall in the gutter, and they are all spoiled. Her father will beat her if she does not bring home some money, and she is crying. She has no shoes or stockings, and her little head is bare. Pluck out my other eye, and give it to her, and her father will not beat her.''I will stay with you one night longer,' said the Swallow, 'but I cannot pluck out your eye. You would be quite blind then.''Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,' said the Prince, 'do as I command you.'So he plucked out the Prince's other eye, and darted down with it. He swooped past the match-girl, and slipped the jewel into the palm of her hand. 'What a lovely bit of glass,' cried the little girl; and she ran home, laughing.Then the Swallow came back to the Prince. 'You are blind now,' he said, 'so I will stay with you always. By Oscar Wilde Swallow Prince Happy Eye Square

It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. 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." "Dorian, this is By Oscar Wilde Shallow People Require Years Rid

Common sense, indeed!" said the Rocket indignantly; "you forget that I am very uncommon, and very remarkable. Why, anybody can have common sense, provided that they have no imagination. But I have imagination, for I never think of things as they really are; I always think of them as being quite different. As for keeping myself dry, there is evidently no one here who can at all appreciate an emotional nature. Fortunately for myself, I don't care. The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated. By Oscar Wilde Rocket Sense Common Indignantly Uncommon

But then no artist expects grace from the vulgar mind, or style from the suburban intellect. Vulgarity and stupidity are two very vivid facts in modern life. One regrets them, naturally. But there they are. By Oscar Wilde Mind Intellect Artist Expects Grace

Ordinary cruelty is simple stupidity. It comes from the entire want of imagination. It is the result in our days of stereotyped systems, of hard-and-fast rules, of centralisation, of officialism, and of irresponsible authority. Whenever there is centralisation there is stupidity. What is inhuman in modern life is officialism. Authority is as destructive to those who exercise it as it is to those on whom it is exercised. By Oscar Wilde Ordinary Stupidity Cruelty Simple Officialism

The heart was made to be broken. By Oscar Wilde Broken Heart Made

What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise By Oscar Wilde Disguise Bitter Trials Blessings

Far away beyond the pine-woods,' he answered, in a low dreamy voice, 'there is a little garden. There the grass grows long and deep, there are the great white stars of the hemlock flower, there the nightingale sings all night long. All night long he sings, and the cold, crystal moon looks down, and the yew-tree spreads out its giant arms over the sleepers. By Oscar Wilde Long Pinewoods Answered Voice Garden

And health in art - what is that? It has nothing to do with a sane criticism of life. There is more health in Baudelaire than there is in [Kingsley]. Health is the artist's recognition of the limitations of the form in which he works. It is the honour and the homage which he gives to the material he uses - whether it be language with its glories, or marble or pigment with their glories - knowing that the true brotherhood of the arts consists not in their borrowing one another's method, but in their producing, each of them by its own individual means, each of them by keeping its objective limits, the same unique artistic delight. The delight is like that given to us by music - for music is the art in which form and matter are always one, the art whose subject cannot be separated from the method of its expression, the art which most completely realises the artistic ideal, and is the condition to which all the other arts are constantly aspiring. By Oscar Wilde Art Health Arts Glories Form

Oh I can't explain. When I like people immensely I never tell their names to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. By Oscar Wilde Explain Thing People Immensely Secrecy

I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it. By Oscar Wilde Secrecy Grown Love Thing Make

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. By Oscar Wilde People Immensely Secrecy Surrendering Part

I believe I am to have enough to live on for about eighteen months at anyrate, so that if I may not write beautiful books, I may at least read beautifulbooks; and what joy can be greater? By Oscar Wilde Anyrate Books Beautifulbooks Greater Live

Youth! There is nothing like it. It's absurd totalk of the ignorance of youth. The only people whose opinions I listen to now with any respect are people much younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her last wonder. As for the aged, I always contradict the aged. I do it on principle. If you ask them their opinion on something that happened yesterday, theysolemnly give you the opinions current in 1820, when people wore high stocks and knew absolutely nothing. By Oscar Wilde Youth People Aged Opinions Absurd

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 passions 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 be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine. By Oscar Wilde Great Things Life Understand Visions

The walls were hung with rich tapestries representing the Triumph of Beauty. A large press, inlaid with agate and lapis-lazuli, filled one corner, and facing the window stood a curiously wrought cabinet with lacquer panels of powdered and mosaiced gold, on which were placed some delicate goblets of Venetian glass, and a cup of dark-veined onyx. Pale poppies were broidered on the silk coverlet of the bed, as though they had fallen from the tired hands of sleep, and tall reeds of fluted ivory bare up the velvet canopy, from which great tufts of ostrich plumes sprang, like white foam, to the pallid silver of the fretted ceiling. A laughing Narcissus in green bronze held a polished mirror above its head. On the table stood a flat bowl of amethyst. By Oscar Wilde Beauty Triumph Walls Hung Rich

Bronze-limbed and well-knit, like a statue wrought by a Grecian, he stood on the sand with his back to the moon, and out of the foam came white arms that beckoned to him, and out of the waves rose dim forms that did him homage. Before him lay his shadow, which was the body of his Soul, and behind him hung the moon in the honey-coloured air. By Oscar Wilde Grecian Moon Bronzelimbed Wellknit Homage

She laughed again. Her teeth showed like white seeds in a scarlet fruit. By Oscar Wilde Laughed Fruit Teeth Showed White

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. By Oscar Wilde American Fact Partly States Idle

And, as for what is called improving conversation, that is merely the foolish method by which the still more foolish philanthropist feebly tries to disarm the just rancour of the criminal classes. By Oscar Wilde Foolish Conversation Classes Called Improving

My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not, by any means, an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which men can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate. By Oscar Wilde Henry Lord Smiling Boy Dear

An actor is part illusionist, part artist, part ham. By Oscar Wilde Part Illusionist Artist Ham Actor

When I say that I am convinced of these things I speak with too much pride. Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the city of God. It is so wonderful that it seems as if a child could reach it in a summer's day. And so a child could. But with me and such as me it is different. One can realise a thing in a single moment, but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet. It is so difficult to keep 'heights that the soul is competent to gain.' We think in eternity, but we move slowly through time; and how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I need not tell again, nor of the weariness and despair that creep back into one's cell, and into the cell of one's heart, with such strange insistence that one has, as it were, to garnish and sweep one's house for their coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter master, or a slave whose slave it is one's chance or choice to be. By Oscar Wilde Pride Convinced Speak Child God

In the cave of black Despair: He only looked upon the sun, And drank the morning air. By Oscar Wilde Despair Sun Air Cave Black

But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had never been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal merely because the world had sought to stave them into submission or to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the dominant characteristic. By Oscar Wilde Dorian Gray Understood Pain Spirituality

Rid of the world's injustice, and his pain, He rests at last beneath God's veil of blue: Taken from life when life and love were new The youngest of the martyrs here is lain, Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain. No cypress shades his grave, no funeral yew, But gentle violets weeping with the dew Weave on his bones an ever-blossoming chain. O proudest heart that broke for misery! O sweetest lips since those of Mitylene! O poet-painter of our English land! Thy name was writ in water - it shall stand: And tears like mine will keep thy memory green, As Isabella did her Basil tree. Rome By Oscar Wilde Fair Sebastian God Life Rid

And I did a strange thing, but what I did matters not, for in a valley that is but a day's journey from this place have I hidden the Mirror of Wisdom. Do but suffer me to enter into thee again and be thy servant, and thou shalt be wiser than all the wise men, and Wisdom shall be thine. Suffer me to enter into thee, and none will be as wise as thou.' But the young Fisherman laughed. 'Love is better than Wisdom,' he cried, 'and the little Mermaid loves me.' 'Nay, but there is nothing better than Wisdom,' said the Soul. 'Love is better,' answered the young Fisherman, and he plunged into the deep, and the Soul went weeping away over the marshes. By Oscar Wilde Wisdom Mirror Fisherman Thing Soul

He was conscious - and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into his brown agate eyes - that it was through certain words of his, musical words said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray's soul had turned to this white girl and bowed in worship before her. To a large extent the lad was his own creation. He had made him premature. That was something. Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed the office of art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting. By Oscar Wilde Words Musical Dorian Gray Art

I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world ... And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom. By Oscar Wilde World Trees Garden Wanted Eat

The crude commercialism of America, its materialising spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man who, according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherry-tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature. By Oscar Wilde America George Washington Spirit Things

Concordantly, while your first question may be the most pertinent, you may or may not realize it is also the most irrelevant. By Oscar Wilde Concordantly Pertinent Irrelevant Question Realize

I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day - mock me horribly! By Oscar Wilde Jealous Die Beauty Mock Portrait

If you are not long, I will wait for you all my life. By Oscar Wilde Long Life Wait

At six o'clock we cleaned our cells,At seven all was still,But the sough and swing of a mighty wingThe prison seemed to fill,For the Lord of Death with icy breathHad entered in to kill. By Oscar Wilde Lord Death Kill Oclock Cleaned

The man who says his wife can't take a joke, forgets that she took him. By Oscar Wilde Joke Forgets Man Wife

I don't know how to talk.Oh! 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. By Oscar Wilde Talkoh Talk Tact Woman Loved

Well, eighteen, then. And I saw you with him the other night at the opera." She laughed nervously as she spoke, and watched him with her vague forget-me-not eyes. She was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions. She tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy. Her name was Victoria, and she had a perfect mania for going to church. By Oscar Wilde Eighteen Opera Eyes Victoria Night

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. By Oscar Wilde Man Person Talks Give Mask

Poor Aubrey: I hope he will get all right. He brought a strangely new personality to English art, and was a master in his way of fantastic grace, and the charm of the unreal. His muse had moods of terrible laughter. Behind his grotesques there seemed to lurk some curious philosophy ... By Oscar Wilde Aubrey Poor Hope English Art

Some six weeks agoI was allowed by the doctor to have white bread to eat instead of the coarseblack or brown bread of ordinary prison fare. It is a great delicacy. It willsound strange that dry bread could possibly be a delicacy to any one. To meit is so much so that at the close of each meal I carefully eat whatever crumbsmay be left on my tin plate, or have fallen on the rough towel that one usesas a cloth so as not to soil one's table; and I do so not from hunger - I getnow quite sufficient food - but simply in order that nothing should bewasted of what is given to me. So one should look on love. By Oscar Wilde Bread Fare Weeks Agoi Allowed

I have no ambition to play the part of a mother, and why should I interfere with her illusions? I find it hard enough to keep my own. By Oscar Wilde Mother Illusions Ambition Play Part

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. By Oscar Wilde Government People Form Suitable Inquire

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) By Oscar Wilde Sir Chiltern Cheveley Robert Mrs

Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all, you must not strip it of vitality. By Oscar Wilde Beauty Abstraction Vitality Ideal Dangerous

Always here in summer when we want something to chill our intelligence. Don't flatter yourself, By Oscar Wilde Intelligence Summer Chill Flatter

I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing. When we meet--we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go down to the Duke's--we tell each other the most absurd stories with the most serious faces. My wife is very good at it--much better, in fact, than I am. She never gets confused over her dates, and I always do. But when she does find me out, she makes no row at all. I sometimes wish she would; but she merely laughs at me. By Oscar Wilde Wife Married Parties Charm Marriage

An educated person's ideas of Art are drwan naturally from what Art has been, whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what Art has never been; and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure it by a standard on the rejection of which its real perfection depends. By Oscar Wilde Art Measure Standard Depends Educated

ALGERNON. 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.JACK. I have no doubt about that, dear Algy. The Divorce Court was specially invented for people whose memories are so curiously constituted.ALGERNON. Oh! there is no use speculating on that subject. Divorces are made in Heaven- ... By Oscar Wilde Algernon Romantic Proposing Algy Heaven

I call it our English Renaissance because it is indeed a sort of new birth of the spirit of man, like the great Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth century, in its desire for a more gracious and comely way of life, its passion for physical beauty, its exclusive attention to form, its seeking for new subjects for poetry, new forms of art, new intellectual and imaginative enjoyments: and I call it our romantic movement because it is our most recent expression of beauty. By Oscar Wilde Renaissance Call Beauty English Italian

I would not a bit mind sleeping in the cool grass in summer, and when winter came on sheltering myself by the warm close-thatched rick, or under the penthouse of a great barn, provided I had love in my heart. By Oscar Wilde Summer Rick Barn Provided Heart

LADY BRACKNELLI had some crumpets with Lady Harbury, who seems to me to be living entirely for pleasure now.ALGERNONI hear her hair has turned quite gold from grief. By Oscar Wilde Harbury Lady Bracknelli Grief Crumpets

LADY BRACKNELLThirty-five 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. Lady Dumbleton is an instance in point. To my own knowledge she has been thirty-five ever since she arrived at the age of forty, which was many years ago now. By Oscar Wilde Lady Bracknellthirtyfive Attractive Age Thirtyfive

Me, sir! What has it to do with me? You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter - a girl brought up with the utmost care - to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel? Good morning, Mr. Worthing! By Oscar Wilde Sir Worthing Lord Bracknell Daughter

LADY BRACKNELLAlgernon is an extremely, I may almost say an ostentatiously, eligible young man. He has nothing, but he looks everything. What more can one desire? By Oscar Wilde Lady Extremely Ostentatiously Eligible Man

Do you smoke? Jack. Well, yes, I must admit I smoke. Lady Bracknell. I am glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind. There are far too many idle men in London as it is. By Oscar Wilde Smoke Jack Bracknell London Lady

Lady Bracknell: Is this Miss Prism a female of repellent aspect, remotely connected with education?Chasuble: (Somewhat indignantly) She is the most cultivated of ladies, and the very picture of respectability.Lady Bracknell: It is obviously the same person. By Oscar Wilde Bracknell Chasuble Miss Prism Lady

Lady Bracknell, I hate to seem inquisitive, but would you kindly inform me who I am? By Oscar Wilde Bracknell Lady Inquisitive Hate Kindly

Lady Bracknell: He was eccentric, I admit. But only in later years. And that was the result of the Indian climate, and marriage, and indigestion, and other things of that kind. By Oscar Wilde Bracknell Lady Eccentric Admit Indian

LADY BRACKNELL. [Rising and drawing herself up.] You must be quite aware that what you propose is out of the question. JACK. Then a passionate celibacy is all that any of us can look forward to. By Oscar Wilde Lady Bracknell Jack Rising Question

LADY BRACKNELL: It is my last reception, and one wants something that will encourage conversation, particularly at the end of the season when every one has practically said whatever they had to say, which, in most cases, was probably not much. By Oscar Wilde Lady Bracknell Reception Conversation Cases

Never met such a Gorgon ... I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair. By Oscar Wilde Gorgon Met Lady Bracknell Case

LADY BRACKNELLTo speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable. By Oscar Wilde Lady Frankly Engagements Bracknellto Speak

Jack: Actually, I was found. Lady Bracknell: Found? Jack: Uh, yes, I was in ... a handbag. Lady Bracknell: A handbag? Jack: Yes, it was ... [makes gestures] Jack: an ordinary handbag. By Oscar Wilde Jack Found Bracknell Handbag Lady

Jack. [After some hesitation.] I know nothing, Lady Bracknell. Lady Bracknell. I am pleased to hear it. 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. By Oscar Wilde Jack Bracknell Lady Ignorance Education

An opinion is not necesarily correct just because you're willing to die for it. By Oscar Wilde Opinion Necesarily Correct Die

Harry," said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face, "every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul. By Oscar Wilde Portrait Hallward Basil Sitter Harry

Love! What is love? It's nothing. It's just a word. It doesn't exist. Only pleasure is important. By Oscar Wilde Love Word Exist Important Pleasure

The British cook, for her iniquities, is a foolish woman who should be turned into a pillar of salt which she never knows how to use. By Oscar Wilde British Cook Iniquities Foolish Woman

I blame myself without reserve for my weakness. It was merely weakness. One half-hour with Art was always more to me than a cycle with you. Nothing really at any period of my life was ever of the smallest importance to me compared with Art. But in the case of an artist, weakness is nothing less than a crime, when it is a weakness that paralyses the imagination. By Oscar Wilde Weakness Art Blame Reserve Artist

What sort of life would his be if, day and night, shadows of his crime were to peer at him from silent corners, to mock him from secret places, to whisper in his ear as he sat at the feast, to wake him with icy fingers as he lay asleep! By Oscar Wilde Day Night Shadows Corners Places

It is quite true that I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man usually gives to a friend. Somehow, I had never loved a woman. I suppose I never had time. Perhaps, as Harry says, a really grande passion is the privilege of those who have nothing to do, and that is the use of the idle classes in a country By Oscar Wilde Friend True Worshipped Romance Feeling

It is always twilight in one's cell, as it is always twilight in one's heart. And in the sphere of thought, no less than in the sphere of time, motion is no more. The thing that you personally have long ago forgotten, or can easily forget, is happening to me now, and will happen to me again to-morrow. By Oscar Wilde Twilight Cell Heart Sphere Thought

I left her in the forest of Arden; I shall find her in an orchard in Verona. By Oscar Wilde Arden Verona Left Forest Find

The best way to make children good is to make them happy. By Oscar Wilde Make Happy Children Good

Behind Joy and Laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind Sorrow there is always Sorrow. Pain, unlike Pleasure, wears no mask. By Oscar Wilde Coarse Joy Laughter Temperament Hard

I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age ... The gods had given me almost everything. I had genius, a distinguished name, high social position, brilliancy,intellectual daring; I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men and the colour of things: there was nothing I said or did that did not make people wonder ... I treated Art as the supreme reality, and life as mere mode of fiction: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram. By Oscar Wilde Art Age Man Stood Symbolic

If I could get back my youth, I'd do anything in the world except get up early, take exercise or be respectable. By Oscar Wilde Youth Early Respectable Back World

And so he would now study perfumes, and the secrets of their manufacture, distilling heavily-scented oils, and burning odorous gums from the East. He saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not its counterpart in the sensuous life, and set himself to discover their true relations, wondering what there was in frankincense that made one mystical, and in ambergris that stirred one's passions, and in violets that woke the memory of dead romances, and in musk that troubled the brain, and in champak that stained the imagination; and seeking often to elaborate a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several influences of sweet-smelling roots, and scented pollen-laden flower, of aromatic balms, and of dark and fragrant woods, of spikenard that sickens, of hovenia that makes men mad, and of aloes that are said to be able to expel melancholy from the soul. By Oscar Wilde East Perfumes Manufacture Distilling Oils

As he looked back upon man moving through History, he was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had been surrendered! and to such little purpose! ... Hedonism ... was to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is but itself a moment. By Oscar Wilde History Loss Looked Back Moving

Reported as Oscar Wilde's last words on his death bed ... This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has to go. By Oscar Wilde Oscar Wilde Reported Bed Words

The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. By Oscar Wilde Impossible Proper Aim Reconstruct Society

Sometime you will find, even as I have found, that there is no such thing as romantic experience; there are romantic memories, and there is the desire of romance- that is all. Our most fiery moments of ecstasy are merely shadows of what somewhere else we have felt, or of what we long someday to feel By Oscar Wilde Romantic Find Found Experience Memories

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. (Algernon in The Importance of Being Ernest) By Oscar Wilde Love Romantic Proposal Algernon Ernest

A book is either nicely written or it's badly written. That's it. By Oscar Wilde Written Book Nicely Badly

The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world. By Oscar Wilde London Dominate World Man Dinnertable

And does his philosophy make you happy?" "I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have searched for pleasure." "And found it, Mr. Gray?" "Often. Too often." The duchess sighed. "I am searching for peace," she By Oscar Wilde Happy Happiness Philosophy Make Searched

Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you - well, of course you have an intellectual expression, and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself an exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. By Oscar Wilde Basil Narcissus Intellectual Expression Beauty

The family as subversive of true socialistic and communal unity is to be annihilated." Yes, President, I agree completely with Article 5. A family is a terrible incumbrance, especially when one is not married. By Oscar Wilde Annihilated President Article Subversive True

Like Keats he may wander through the old-world forests of Latmos, or stand like Morris on the galley's deck with the Viking when king and galley have long since passed away. But the drama is the meeting-place of art and life; it deals, as Mazzini said, not merely with man, but with social man, with man in his relation to God and to Humanity. It is the product of a period of great national united energy; it is impossible without a noble public, and belongs to such ages as the age of Elizabeth in London and of Pericles at Athens; it is part of such lofty moral and spiritual ardour as came to Greek after the defeat of the Persian fleet, and to Englishman after the wreck of the Armada of Spain. By Oscar Wilde Galley Latmos Keats Morris Viking

The one advantage of playing with fire, Lady Caroline, is that one never gets even singed. It is the people who don't know how to play with it who get burned up. By Oscar Wilde Lady Caroline Fire Singed Advantage

I will sell thee my soul,' he answered: 'I pray thee buy it off me, for I am weary of it. Of what use is my soul to me? I cannot see it. I may not touch it. I do not know it.' But the merchants mocked at him, and said, 'Of what use is a man's soul to us? It is not worth a clipped piece of silver. Sell us thy body for a slave, and we will clothe thee in sea-purple, and put a ring upon thy finger, and make thee the minion of the great Queen. But talk not of the soul, for to us it is nought, nor has it any value for our service.' And the young Fisherman said to himself: '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.' And he passed out of the market-place, and went down to the shore of the sea, and began to ponder on what he should do. By Oscar Wilde Soul Thee Worth Answered Pray

To elope is cowardly; it is running away from danger, and danger hasbecome so rare in modern life. By Oscar Wilde Cowardly Life Danger Elope Running

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! By Oscar Wilde Fools Jacki Cleverness Clever People

The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden. It ends with Revelations. By Oscar Wilde Book Life Garden Begins Man

Besides, women were better suited to bear sorrow than men. They lived on their emotions. They only thought of their emotions. When they took lovers, it was merely to have some one with whom they could have scenes. By Oscar Wilde Emotions Women Men Suited Bear

LORD ILLINGWORTH What do you think she'd do if I kissed her?MRS ALLONBY Either marry you, or strike you across the face with her glove. What would you do if she struck you across the face with her glove?LORD ILLINGWORTH Fall in love with her, probably. By Oscar Wilde Lord Mrs Illingworth Glove Allonby

Nor is it again that the novel has killed the play, as some critics would persuade us - the romantic movement of France shows us that. The work of Balzac and of Hugo grew up side by side together; nay, more, were complementary to each other, though neither of them saw it. While all other forms of poetry may flourish in an ignoble age, the splendid individualism of the lyrist, fed by its own passion, and lit by its own power, may pass as a pillar of fire as well across the desert as across places that are pleasant. It is none the less glorious though no man follow it - nay, by the greater sublimity of its loneliness it may be quickened into loftier utterance and intensified into clearer song. By Oscar Wilde France Nay Play Killed Critics

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." "It was a very disappointing By Oscar Wilde Confession Words Made Disappointing Put

It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, 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. The thoroughly well-informed manthat is the modern ideal. And the mind of 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. By Oscar Wilde Beauty Sad Doubt Genius Longer

Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.""I hate them for it," cried Hallward. "An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world what is it; and for that the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray. By Oscar Wilde Poets Scrupulous Hallward World Publication

Love is like a war; easy to start but hard to end and you never know where it might take you. By Oscar Wilde Love War Easy Start Hard

Dry-goods! What are American dry-goods?" asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb. "American novels," answered Lord Henry, helping himself to some quail. By Oscar Wilde Drygoods American Henry Lord Asked

What of Art?' she asked'It is a malody.''Love?''Illusion''Religion?''A fashionable substitute for belief.''What are you?''To define is to limit By Oscar Wilde Art Love Illusion Religion Limit

For each man kills the thing he loves yet each man does not diehe does not die a death of shame on a day of dark disgracenor have a noose about his neck, nor a cloth upon his facenor drop feet foremost through the floor into an empty spaceHe does not sit with silent men who watch him night and dayWho watch him when he tries to weep and when he tries to prayWho watch him lest himself should rob the prison of its prey By Oscar Wilde Watch Man Neck Prey Kills

Yesterday evening Mrs. Arundel insisted on my going to the window, and looking at the glorious sky, as she called it. Of course I had to look at it. She is one of those absurdly pretty Philistines to whom one can deny nothing. And what was it? It was simply a very second-rate Turner, a Turner of a bad period By Oscar Wilde Mrs Arundel Yesterday Window Sky

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. By Oscar Wilde Enemies Forgive Annoys

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it By Oscar Wilde Forgive Man Making Thing Long

Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation. The thin beaten-out leaf of tremulous gold that chronicles the direction of forces the eye cannot see is in comparison coarse. It is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in pain. By Oscar Wilde Prosperity Pleasure Success Fibre Things

his passionate absorption in mere existence. Then, By Oscar Wilde Existence Passionate Absorption Mere

Perhaps there may come into my art also, no less than into my life, a still deeper note, one of greater unity of passion, and directness of impulse. Not width but intensity is the true aim of modern art. We are no longer in art concerned with the type. It is with the exception that we have to do. I cannot put my sufferings into any form they took, I need hardly say. Art only begins where Imitation ends, but something must come into my work, of fuller memory of words perhaps, of richer cadences, of more curious effects, of simpler architectural order, of some aesthetic quality at any rate. By Oscar Wilde Art Life Note Passion Impulse

A grapefruit is ionly a lemon that saw an oppurtunity and took advantage of it. By Oscar Wilde Grapefruit Ionly Lemon Oppurtunity Advantage

A grapefruit is just a lemon that saw an opportunity and took advantage of it. By Oscar Wilde Grapefruit Lemon Opportunity Advantage

It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, sketch from him. Of course I have done all that. But he is much more to me than a model or a sitter. I won't tell you that I am dissatisfied with what I have done of him, or that his beauty is such that Art cannot express it. There is nothing that Art cannot express, and I know that the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best work of my life By Oscar Wilde Art Draw Sketch Paint Work

One's days were too brief to take the burden of another's errors on one's shoulders. Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. By Oscar Wilde Shoulders Days Burden Errors Man

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! By Oscar Wilde Voice World Society Matter Choose

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. By Oscar Wilde Fully Shallow Life Completelyor False

Because now you are young and beautiful and the whole world loves you. But, some day, you will be old and wrinkled and no-one will give you a second glance. It is a sad fact, but when youth goes, beauty goes with it. If you want my advice, go out and live. Live each day to the full and enjoy all of life's pleasures. By Oscar Wilde Young Beautiful World Loves Day

We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbor with those virtues that are likely to benefit ourselves. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. By Oscar Wilde Generous Credit Neighbor Virtues Benefit

You can only be yourself everybody else is taken By 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. By Oscar Wilde Common Father Sense Marriage Sense

I never change.MRS. CHEVELEY: (elevating her eyebrows) Then life has taught you nothing?LADY CHILTERN: It has taught me that a person who has once been guilty of a dishonest and dishonorable action may be guilty of it a second time, and should be shunned.MRS. CHEVELEY: Whould that rule apply to everyone?LADY CHILTERN: Yes, to everyone, without exception.MRS. CHEVELEY: Then I am sorry for you, Gertrude, very sorry for you. By Oscar Wilde Cheveley Lady Chiltern Changemrs Gertrude

Like the painting of a sorrow, A face without a heart. By Oscar Wilde Sorrow Heart Painting Face

After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one's tears. By Oscar Wilde Chopin Committed Playing Feel Weeping

But you don't really mean to say that you couldn't love me if my name wasn't Ernest?GWENDOLEN: But your name is Ernest.JACK: Yes, I know it is. But supposing it was something else? Do you mean to say you couldn't love me then?GWENDOLEN (glibly): Ah! that is clearly a metaphysical speculation, and like most metaphysical speculations has very little reference at all to the actual facts of real life, as we know them. By Oscar Wilde Gwendolen Ernest Ernestjack Love Metaphysical

For the good we get from art is not what we learn from it; it is what we become through it. Its real influence will be in giving the mind that enthusiasm which is the secret of Hellenism, accustoming it to demand from art all that art can do in rearranging the facts of common life for us - whether it be by giving the most spiritual interpretation of one's own moments of highest passion or the most sensuous expression of those thoughts that are the farthest removed from sense; in accustoming it to love the things of the imagination for their own sake, and to desire beauty and grace in all things. For he who does not love art in all things does not love it at all, and he who does not need art in all things does not need it at all. By Oscar Wilde Art Things Love Good Learn

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not. By Oscar Wilde Life Fair Good Thing

I tried to visit Albania but I couldn't find it on the map. By Oscar Wilde Albania Map Visit Find

Suddenly a dog bayed in the wood, and the dancers stopped, and going up two by two, knelt down, and kissed the man's hands. As they did so, a little smile touched his proud lips, as a bird's wing touches the water and makes it laugh. But there was disdain in it. By Oscar Wilde Suddenly Wood Stopped Knelt Hands

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 spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital. By Oscar Wilde Peril Surface Art Symbol Work

Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing. By Oscar Wilde Life Complex Simple Thing

Tread Lightly, she is nearUnder the snow,Speak gently, she can hearThe daisies grow. By Oscar Wilde Lightly Tread Gently Grow Nearunder

Requiescat Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow. All her bright golden hair Tarnished with rust, She that was young and fair Fallen to dust. Lily-like, white as snow, She hardly knew She was a woman, so Sweetly she grew. Coffin-board, heavy stone, Lie on her breast, I vex my heart alone She is at rest. Peace, Peace, she cannot hear Lyre or sonnet, All my life's buried here, Heap earth upon it. By Oscar Wilde Speak Tread Snow Requiescat Lightly

The English public takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral. By Oscar Wilde English Immoral Work Public Interest

We become lovers when we see Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet makes us students. The blood of Duncan is upon our hands, with Timon werage against the world, and when Lear wanders out upon the heath the terror of madness touches us. Ours is the white sinlessness of Desdemona, and ours, also, the sin of Iago. By Oscar Wilde Juliet Romeo Hamlet Students Lovers

Like dear St. Francis of Assisi I am wedded to Poverty: but in my case the marriage is not a success. By Oscar Wilde Poverty Francis Assisi Success Dear

It is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in private life. Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrees. By Oscar Wilde Dinner Wine Life Poor Consolation

I love scrapes. They are the only things that are never serious.""Oh, that's nonsense, Algy. You never talk anything but nonsense.""Nobody ever does. By Oscar Wilde Algy Scrapes Love Serious Nonsense

The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality. By Oscar Wilde Dream Reality Brotherhood Man Mere

It is to be noted that Jesus never says that impoverished people are necessarily good, or wealthy people necessarily bad. That would not have been true. Wealthy people are, as a class, better than impoverished people, more moral, more intellectual, more well-behaved. 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. That is the misery of being poor. What Jesus does say is that man reaches his perfection, not through what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely through what he is. By Oscar Wilde People Necessarily Jesus Good Bad

The heart contains passion but the imagination alone contains poetry,' says Charles Baudelaire. This too was the lesson that Theophile Gautier, most subtle of all modern critics, most fascinating of all modern poets, was never tired of teaching - 'Everybody is affected by a sunrise or a sunset.' The absolute distinction of the artist is not his capacity to feel nature so much as his power of rendering it. The entire subordination of all intellectual and emotional faculties to the vital and informing poetic principle is the surest sign of the strength of our Renaissance. By Oscar Wilde Baudelaire Charles Poetry Heart Passion

Against these turbid turquoise skiesThe light and luminous blloonsDip and drift like satin moons,Drift like silken butterflies By Oscar Wilde Butterflies Turbid Turquoise Skiesthe Light

ravelled skeins of glossy white silk, were drifting across the hollowed turquoise of the summer sky. By Oscar Wilde Ravelled Silk Sky Skeins Glossy

Lord Darlington (LD): I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules. Lady Windemere (LW): If we had 'hard-and-fast rules' we would find life much simpler. LD: You allow of no exceptions? LW: None! LD: Ah, what a fascinating Puritan you are, LW. LW: The adjective was unnecessary, LD. By Oscar Wilde Darlington Lord Rules Life Complex

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 ... By Oscar Wilde City Houses Gates Flew Swallow

I have always been my own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray. Then - but I don't know how to explain it to you. Something seemed to tell me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my life. I had a strange feeling that Fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. I grew afraid, and turned to quit the room. It was not conscience that made me do so: it was a sort of cowardice. I take no credit to myself for trying to escape. By Oscar Wilde Gray Dorian Master Till Met

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn't know the market place of any single thing. By Oscar Wilde Cynic Man Darlington Price Sentimentalist

A sentimentalist is simply one who wants to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it. We think we can have our emotions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing emotions have to be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine. The intellectual and emotional life of ordinary people is a very contemptible affair. Just as they borrow their ideas from a sort of circulating library of thought - -the Zeitgeist of an age that has no soul - -and send them back soiled at the end of each week, so they always try to get their emotions on credit, and refuse to pay the bill when it comes in. You should pass out of that conception of life. As soon as you have to pay for an emotion you will know its quality, and be the better for such knowledge. And remember that the sentimentalist is always a cynic at heart. Indeed, sentimentality is merely the bank holiday of cynicism. By Oscar Wilde Emotions Simply Luxury Paying Emotion

Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.Cecil Graham: And 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. By Oscar Wilde Graham Darlington Man Lord Price

Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer. By Oscar Wilde Friendship Love Tragic Longer

He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of his then just conscious boyhood. By Oscar Wilde Untarnished Sins Thought Boyhood Uttered

Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire, From passionate pain to deadlier delight,I am too young to live without desire, Too young art thou to waste this summer nightAsking those idle questions which of oldMan sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told.For, sweet, to feel is better than to know, And wisdom is a childless heritage,One pulse of passionyouth's first fiery glow, Are worth the hoarded proverbs of the sage:Vex not soul with dead philosophy, Have we not lips to kiss with, hearts to love and eyes to see! By Oscar Wilde Young Fire Vex Nay Sweet

Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn't know you were so vain; and I really can't see any resemblance between you, By Oscar Wilde Basil Word Vain Resemblance

That beauty which is meant by art is no mere accident of human life which people can take or leave, but a positive necessity of life if we are to live as nature meant us to, that is to say unless we are content to be less than men. By Oscar Wilde Meant Life Leave Men Beauty

Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else. By Oscar Wilde Brothers Care Die Brother Elder

But the picture? What was he to say of that? It held the secret of his life, and told his story. It had taught him to love his own beauty. Would it teach him to loathe his own soul? Would he ever look at it again? By Oscar Wilde Picture Life Story Beauty Soul

Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written. By Oscar Wilde Thyself Portal World Written Antique

It is curious how vanity helps the successful man and wrecks the failure. By Oscar Wilde Failure Curious Vanity Successful Man

A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it. By Oscar Wilde Parliament Grocer Solicitor Judge Tedious

Something of a load to carry, sir," gasped the little man when they reached the top landing. And he wiped his shiny forehead. "I am afraid it is rather heavy," murmured Dorian as he unlocked the door that opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious secret of his life and hide his soul from the eyes of men. By Oscar Wilde Sir Carry Gasped Landing Load

No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented and rebellious, is probably a real personality, and has much in him ... As for the virtuous poor ... they have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very poor pottage. By Oscar Wilde Unthrifty Ungrateful Discontented Rebellious Personality

I don't wish to harm the ghost in any way,' he said. He looked at his young sons. 'And it is not polite to throw pillows at someone who has been in this house for so long. By Oscar Wilde Harm Ghost Sons Long Looked

I talk so trivially about life because I think that life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it. By Oscar Wilde Talk Life Trivially Important Thing

What a laugh she had!just like a thrush singing. And how pretty she had been in her cotton dresses and her large hats! She knew nothing, but she had everything that he had lost. By Oscar Wilde Singing Laugh Thrush Hats Pretty

And let me touch those curving claws of yellow ivory; and grasp the tail that like a monstrous asp coils round your heavy velvet paws. By Oscar Wilde Ivory Paws Touch Curving Claws

The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation. By Oscar Wilde Played Machine Expression Relation Typewriting

Phidias and the achievements of Greek art are foreshadowed in Homer: Dante prefigures for us the passion and colour and intensity of Italian painting: the modern love of landscape dates from Rousseau, and it is in Keats that one discerns the beginning of the artistic renaissance of England. Byron was a rebel and Shelley a dreamer; but in the calmness and clearness of his vision, his perfect self-control, his unerring sense of beauty and his recognition of a separate realm for the imagination, Keats was the pure and serene artist, the forerunner of the pre-Raphaelite school, and so of the great romantic movement of which I am to speak. By Oscar Wilde Homer Dante Rousseau England Keats

Dorian Gray frowned and turned his head away. He could not help liking the tall, graceful young man who was standing by him. His romantic, olive-coloured face and worn expression interested him. There was something in his low languid voice that was absolutely fascinating. His cool, white, flowerlike hands, even, had a curious charm. They moved, as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language of their own. But he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid. By Oscar Wilde Gray Dorian Frowned Turned Head

I did not think I should be ever loved: do you indeed Love me so much as now you say you do?Ask of the sea-bird if it loves the sea, Ask of the roses if they love the rain, Ask of the little lark, that will not sing Till day break, if it loves to see the day:And yet, these are but empty images, Mere shadows of my love, which is a fire So great that all the waters of the main Can not avail to quench it. By Oscar Wilde Love Loves Mere Day Till

Inteligence lives longer than beauty. By Oscar Wilde Inteligence Beauty Lives Longer

What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. they would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always alive. (Dorian Gray regarding his portrait) By Oscar Wilde Corpse Canvas Worm Sins Painted

In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years By Oscar Wilde Basil Hallward Room Clamped Easel

Algernon. Good heavens! Is marriage so demoralising as that? Lane. I believe it is a very pleasant state, sir. I have had very little experience of it myself up to the present. I have only been married once. That was in consequence of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person. Algernon. By Oscar Wilde Algernon Good Heavens Lane Sir

And now, dear Mr. Worthing, I will not intrude any longer into a house of sorrow. I would merely beg you not to be too much bowed down by grief. What seem to us bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.This seems to me a blessing of an extremely obvious kind. By Oscar Wilde Worthing Dear Sorrow Intrude Longer

There is no error more common than that of thinking that those who are the causes or occasions of great tragedies share in the feelings suitable to the tragic mood: no error more fatal than expecting it of them. The martyr in his 'shirt of flame' may be looking on the face of God, but to him who is piling the faggots or loosening the logs for the blast the whole scene is no more than the slaying of an ox is to the butcher, or the felling of a tree to the charcoal burner in the forest, or the fall of a flower to one who is mowing down the grass with a scythe. Great passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be seen only by those who are on a level with them. By Oscar Wilde Error Great Mood Common Thinking

JACKThat is nonsense. If I marry a charming girl like Gwendolen, and she is the only girl I ever saw in my life that I would marry, I certainly won't want to know Bunbury.ALGERNONThen your wife will. You don't seem to realize, that in married life three is company and two is none.JACKThat, my dear young friend, is the theory that the corrupt French Drama has been propounding for the last fifty years.ALGERNONYes; and that the happy English home has proved in half the time. By Oscar Wilde Jackthat Nonsense Gwendolen Marry Girl

If a woman wants to hold a man she has merely to appeal to what is worst in him. By Oscar Wilde Woman Hold Man Appeal Worst

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. By Oscar Wilde People Degrading Degrades Authority Exercised

Don't be led astray into the paths of virtue. By Oscar Wilde Virtue Led Astray Paths

I have no terror of death. It is the coming of death that terrifies me. Its monstrous wings seem to wheel in the leaden air around me. By Oscar Wilde Death Terror Coming Terrifies Monstrous

Wishing to make an effective entrance, he flung it wide open, when a heavy jug of water fell right down on him, wetting him to the skin, and just missing his left shoulder by a couple of inches. At the same moment he heard stifled shrieks of laughter proceeding from the four-post bed. By Oscar Wilde Wishing Entrance Open Wetting Skin

It may be bad manner to appear here smoking, but it is far worse to disturb me when I am smoking. By Oscar Wilde Smoking Bad Manner Worse Disturb

Thou art the same: 'tis I whose wretched soul Takes discontent to be its paramour, And gives its kingdom to the rude control Of what should be its servitor, - for sure Wisdom is somewhere, though the stormy sea Contain it not, and the huge deep answer 'Tis not in me.' To By Oscar Wilde Tis Wisdom Thou Paramour Servitor

The secret seems to be the only way to become mysterious and wonderful modern life. The commonest thing gets a touch fascinating when done on the sly. By Oscar Wilde Life Secret Mysterious Wonderful Modern

Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched. By Oscar Wilde Depend Things Happiness Written Mine

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. By Oscar Wilde Kipling Point View Aspirates Literature

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. By Oscar Wilde Good Characters Intellects Enemies Choose

I dare say that if I knew him I should not be his friend at all. It is a very dangerous thing to know one's friends. By Oscar Wilde Dare Knew Friend Friends Dangerous

You seem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing. When we meet - we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go down to the Duke's - we tell each other the most absurd stories with the most serious faces. By Oscar Wilde Married Parties Forget Charm Marriage

The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity. By Oscar Wilde Age Public Badly Brought Art

Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memories. By Oscar Wilde Music Memories Art Nigh Tears

But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend. Browning writes about that somewhere; but our own senses will imagine them for us. There are moments when the odour of lilas blanc passes suddenly across me, and I have to live the strangest month of my life over again. By Oscar Wilde Dorian Sky Depend Chance Tone

The great events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion. We reject the burden of their memory, and have anodynes against them. But the little things, the things of no moment, remain with us. In some tiny ivory cell the brain stores the most delicate, and the most fleeting impressions. By Oscar Wilde Unmoved Consciousness Unreal Great Events

The man with a clear conscience probably has a poor memory. By Oscar Wilde Memory Man Clear Conscience Poor

Memory is the diary we all carry about with us. By Oscar Wilde Memory Diary Carry

The beautiful, passionate, ruined South, the land of magnolias and music, of roses and romance ... living on the memory of crushing defeats By Oscar Wilde South Passionate Beautiful Ruined Music

For you, at least, are young; 'no hungry generations tread you down,' and the past does not weary you with the intolerable burden of its memories nor mock you with the ruins of a beauty, the secret of whose creation you have lost. That very absence of tradition, which Mr. Ruskin thought would rob your rivers of their laughter and your flowers of their light, may be rather the source of your freedom and your strength. By Oscar Wilde Young Beauty Lost Hungry Generations

Memory, like a horrible malady, was eating his soul away By Oscar Wilde Memory Malady Horrible Eating Soul

Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play ... I tell you, that it is on things like these that our lives depend. By Oscar Wilde Life Nerves Fibres Dreams Question

I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering. By Oscar Wilde Memoirs Dislike Modern Memories Remembering

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. By Oscar Wilde Country Superfluity Man Elaborate Tombstone

From the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul brain and power. By Oscar Wilde Moment Met Personality Extraordinary Influence

The visible aspect of modern life disturbs him not; rather is it for him to render eternal all that is beautiful in Greek, Italian, and Celtic legend. By Oscar Wilde Italian Greek Celtic Legend Visible

MRS ALLONBY You have your looking-glassLORD ILLINGWORTH It is unkind. I merely shows me my wrinkles.MRS ALLONBY Mine is better behaved. It never tells me the truth.LORD ILLINGWORTH Then it is in love with you. By Oscar Wilde Mrs Allonby Illingworth Unkind Lookingglasslord

I don't desire to change anything in England except the weather, I am quite content with philosophical contemplation. By Oscar Wilde England Weather Contemplation Desire Change

The only real people are the people who never existed, and if a novelist is base enough to go to life for his personages he should at least pretend that they are creations, and not boast of them as copies. By Oscar Wilde Existed Creations Copies People Real

Your machinery is beautiful. Your society people have apologized to me for the envious ridicule with which your newspapers have referred to me. Your newspapers are comic but never amusing. Your Water Tower is a castellated monstrosity with pepperboxes stuck all over it. I am amazed that any people could so abuse Gothic art and make a structure not like a water tower but like a tower of a medieval castle. It should be torn down. It is a shame to spend so much money on buildings with such an unsatisfactory result. Your city looks positively dreary. By Oscar Wilde Tower Beautiful Machinery Water Newspapers

And her sweet red lips on these lips of mineBurned like the ruby fire setIn the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine,Or the bleeding wounds of the pomegranate,Or the heart of the lotus drenched and wetWith the spilt-out blood of the rose-red wine. By Oscar Wilde Lips Wine Sweet Red Mineburned

Now and then it is a joy to have one's table red with wine and roses. By Oscar Wilde Roses Joy Table Red Wine

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. By Oscar Wilde Journalism Favor Modern Events Uneducated

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By Oscar Wilde Uneducated Journalism Community Giving Opinions

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. By Oscar Wilde Spite Union College Oxford England

The English have a miraculous power of turning wine into water. By Oscar Wilde English Water Miraculous Power Turning

Out of the sea will rise Behemoth and Leviathan, and sail 'round the high-pooped galleys ... Dragons will wander about the waste places, and the phoenix will soar from her nest of fire into the air. We shall lay our hands upon the basilisk, and see the jewel in the toad's head. Champing his gilded oats, the Hippogriff will stand in our stalls, and over our heads will float the Blue Bird singing of beautiful and impossible things, of things that are lovely and that never happen, of things that are not and that should be. By Oscar Wilde Leviathan Behemoth Things Sail Round

Never love anybody who treats you like you're ordinary. By Oscar Wilde Ordinary Love Treats

Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary. By Oscar Wilde Ordinary Love Treats

Now, my dear Tuppy, don't be led astray into the paths of virtue. Reformed, you would be perfectly tedious. That is the worst of women. They always want one to be good. And if we are good, when they meet us, they don't love us at all. They like to find us quite irretrievably bad, and to leave us quite unattractively good. By Oscar Wilde Tuppy Good Virtue Dear Led

I am not laughing, Dorian; at least I am not laughing at you. But you should not say the greatest romance of your life. You should say the first romance of your life. You will always be loved, and you will always be in love with love. A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the idle classes of a country. Don't be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for you. This is merely the beginning. By Oscar Wilde Dorian Laughing Life Romance Love

It is a pity to make a mystery out of what should most easily be understood. There is nothing occult about the thought that all things maybe made well or made ill. A work of art is a well-made thing - that is all. It may be a well-made statue of a well-made chair or a well-made book. Art is not a special sauce applied to ordinary cooking; it is the cooking itself that is good. Most simply and generally, Art may be thought of as "The Well Doing of What Needs Doing." By Oscar Wilde Wellmade Art Understood Pity Make

It is very difficult sometimes to keep awake, especially at church, but there is no difficulty at all about sleeping. By Oscar Wilde Awake Church Sleeping Difficult Difficulty

America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier in history than itself. By Oscar Wilde Europe America Forgiven Discovered Earlier

Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude. By Oscar Wilde Bore Rude Man Unintentionally

A gentleman never offends unintentionally By Oscar Wilde Unintentionally Gentleman Offends

I was dominated, soul, brain, and power, by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream. I By Oscar Wilde Soul Brain Dominated Power Dream

And after the second year was over, the Soul said to the young Fisherman at night-time, and as he sat in the wattled house alone, "Lo! now I have tempted thee with evil, and I have tempted thee with good, and thy love is stronger than I am. Wherefore will I tempt thee no longer, but I pray thee to suffer me to enter thy heart, that I may be with thee even as before.""Surely thou mayest enter," said the young Fisherman, "for in the days when with no heart thou didst go through the world thou must have suffered.""Alas!" cried his Soul, "I can find no place of entrance, so compassed about with love is this heart of thine. By Oscar Wilde Thee Fisherman Soul Young Nighttime

To live for others as a definite self-conscious aim was not his creed. It was not the basis of his creed. When he says, 'Forgive your enemies,' it is not for the sake of the enemy, but for one's own sake that he says so, and because love is more beautiful than hate. In his own entreaty to the young man, 'Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor,' it is not of the state of the poor that he is thinking but of the soul of the young man, the soul that wealth was marring. In his view of life he is one with the artist who knows that by the inevitable law of self-perfection, the poet must sing, and the sculptor think in bronze, and the painter make the world a mirror for his moods, as surely and as certainly as the hawthorn must blossom in spring, and the corn turn to gold at harvest-time, and the moon in her ordered wanderings change from shield to sickle, and from sickle to shield. By Oscar Wilde Creed Live Definite Selfconscious Aim

In his very rejection of art Walt Whitman is an artist. He tried to produce a certain effect by certain means and he succeeded ... He stands apart, and the chief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance. He has begun a prelude to larger themes. He is the herald to a new era. As a man he is the precursor of a fresh type. He is a factor in the heroic and spiritual evolution of the human being. If Poetry has passed him by, Philosophy will take note of him. By Oscar Wilde Walt Whitman Artist Rejection Art

Are you very much in love with him?' he asked. She did not answer for some time, but stood gazing at the landscape.'I wish I knew' she said at last.He shook his head. -'Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys.''What is that?'-'Disillusion. By Oscar Wilde Love Disillusion Knowledge Asked Gladys

For Man's grim Justice goes its way, And will not swerve aside: It slays the weak, it slays the strong, It has a deadly stride: With iron heel it slays the strong, The monstrous parricide! By Oscar Wilde Slays Strong Man Justice Weak

But love is notfashionable any more, the poets have killed it. They wrote so muchabout it that nobody believed them, and I am not surprised. Truelove suffers, and is silent. By Oscar Wilde Love Notfashionable Poets Killed Surprised

Ah! that quite does for me. I haven't a word to say ... Too much care was taken with our education, I am afraid. To have been well brought up is a great drawback nowadays. It shuts one out from so much. By Oscar Wilde Education Afraid Word Nowadays Care

Human lifethat appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams. By Oscar Wilde Human Investigating Lifethat Appeared Thing

I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses anyone for asking any question - simple curiosity. By Oscar Wilde Simple Curiosity Question Reason Asked

Possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any questionsimple curiosity. I have a theory that it is always the women who propose By Oscar Wilde Reason Curiosity Excuses Questionsimple Propose

And his Soul besought him to depart, but he would not, so great was his love. And the sea came nearer, and sought to cover him with its waves, and when he knew that the end was at hand he kissed with mad lips the cold lips of the Mermaid, and the heart that was within him brake. And as through the fullness of his love his heart did break, the Soul found an entrance and entered in, and was one with him even as before. And the sea covered the young Fisherman with its waves. By Oscar Wilde Soul Depart Love Waves Besought

I don't think I am heartless. Do you?''You have done too many foolish things during the last fortnight to be entitled to give yourself that name, Dorian,' answered Lord Henry with his sweet melancholy smile. By Oscar Wilde Dorian Heartless Lord Henry Answered

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. By Oscar Wilde Prince Dear Leave Forget Spring

All trials are trials for one's life. By Oscar Wilde Life Trials

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. By Oscar Wilde Youth Back Sluggish Pulse Joy

M. Zola sits down to give us a picture of the Second Empire. Who cares for the Second Empire now? It is out of date. Life goes faster than Realism, but Romanticism is always in front of Life. By Oscar Wilde Empire Zola Sits Give Picture

The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul? By Oscar Wilde Oneself Final Mystery Star Balance

Chrysanthemums from gilded argosyUnload their gaudy senseless merchandise. By Oscar Wilde Chrysanthemums Merchandise Gilded Argosyunload Gaudy

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone. By Oscar Wilde Art Nature Learn Love Understand

Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it. By Oscar Wilde Black Religion Blind Man Room

But you will tell me this is an inartistic age, and we are an inartistic people, and the artist suffers much in this nineteenth century of ours. Of course he does. I, of all men, am not going to deny that. But remember that there has never been an artistic age, or an artistic people since the beginning of the world. The artist has always been, and will always be, an exquisite exception. By Oscar Wilde Inartistic Age Suffers Nineteenth Century

Every day. I couldn't be happy if I didn't see him every day. He is absolutely necessary to me. By Oscar Wilde Day Happy Absolutely

To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution. By Oscar Wilde Revolution French Born Bred Handbag

The best one can say of modern creative art is that it is just a little less vulgar than reality. By Oscar Wilde Reality Modern Creative Art Vulgar

Be yourself; everyone else is taken. By Oscar Wilde

experimental method was the only method by which one could arrive at any scientific analysis of the passions; and certainly Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemed to promise rich and fruitful results. His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon By Oscar Wilde Dorian Gray Method Experimental Passions

When asked what he thought of sports, Oscar Wilde replied, I approve of any activity that requires the wearing of special clothing. By Oscar Wilde Oscar Wilde Sports Replied Clothing

Ever since I met you I have admired you more than any girl ... I have ever met since ... I met you. By Oscar Wilde Met Girl Admired

You must admit, Harry, that women give to men the very gold of their lives.' 'Possibly,' he sighed, 'but they invariably want it back in such very small change. By Oscar Wilde Harry Possibly Admit Lives Women

Vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people. By Oscar Wilde Vulgarity People Simply Conduct

Ah! that is the great thing in life, to live the truth. By Oscar Wilde Life Truth Great Thing Live

The ideal husband? There couldn't be such a thing. The institution is wrong. By Oscar Wilde Husband Ideal Thing Wrong Institution

My doctor says I must not have any serious conversation after seven [o'clock]. It makes me talk in my sleep. By Oscar Wilde Oclock Doctor Conversation Sleep Makes

Indeed, as a rule, everybody turns out to be somebody else. By Oscar Wilde Rule Turns

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. By Oscar Wilde Man Intellect Subtle Refined Stupidity

If one listens one may be convinced; and a man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a thoroughly unreasonable person By Oscar Wilde Convinced Person Listens Man Argument