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ea9be89
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It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man', says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life is a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
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Oscar Wilde |
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ee086ce
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The sky was pure opal now.
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Oscar Wilde |
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802b8f4
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The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered.
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wilde
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Oscar Wilde |
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28a0378
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Christ did not die to save people, but to teach people how to save each other. This is, I have no doubt, a grave heresy, but it is also a fact.
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religion
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Oscar Wilde |
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427e302
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I never came across anyone in whom the moral sense was dominant who was not heartless, cruel, vindictive, log-stupid, and entirely lacking in the smallest sense of humanity. Moral people, as they are termed, are simple beasts.
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Oscar Wilde |
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d9d28e4
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Do you know that I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world? Certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance.
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Oscar Wilde |
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4bb12a6
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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.
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life
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Oscar Wilde |
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7ef36b9
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Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. Besides, each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible
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oscar-you-so-sassy
so-true
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Oscar Wilde |
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14f0c2b
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Then she gave one last burst of music. The white Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The red rose heard it, and it trembled all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the cold morning air. Echo bore it to her purple cavern in the hills, and woke the sleeping shepherds from their dreams. It floated through the reeds of the river, and they carried its message to the sea.
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Oscar Wilde |
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1b2ba56
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For he who lives more lives than one More deaths than one must die.
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Oscar Wilde |
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018386c
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Lord Illingworth told me this morning that there was an orchid there as beautiful as the seven deadly sins.
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Oscar Wilde |
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fab7f15
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One must be serious about something, if one wants to have any amusement in life.
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life
hobbies
seriousness
hobby
enjoyment
enjoy
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Oscar Wilde John Cooper |
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243ca50
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I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood.
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Oscar Wilde |
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2f4ef57
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There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other - by language, which is the parent, and not the child, of thought.
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Oscar Wilde |
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0d2bf6e
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The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art.
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Oscar Wilde |
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5fbeb95
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Then I am sorry I did not stay away longer I like being missed.
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Oscar Wilde |
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1598cca
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Nobody is worthy to be loved. The fact that God loves man shows us that in the divine order of ideal things it is written that eternal love is to be given to what is eternally unworthy. Or if that phrase seems to be a bitter one to bear, let us say that everybody is worthy of love, except him who thinks he is.
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god
love
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Oscar Wilde |
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275d2a9
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Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight rope. When the verities become acrobats, we can judge them.
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reality
truth
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Oscar Wilde |
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47d5b63
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Human life--that 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.
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Oscar Wilde |
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9789ec8
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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..
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Oscar Wilde |
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10517dc
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LADY BRACKNELL Thirty-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.
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women
humor
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Oscar Wilde |
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f527f62
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I tremble with pleasure when I think that on the very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and that I shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one, and make the other toss the pale purple of its plumes, so that all the air shall be Arabia for me.
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Oscar Wilde |
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4223a15
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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.
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Oscar Wilde |
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d441c21
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The long black nights, when the moon hides her face, when the stars are afraid, are not so black. The silence that dwells in the forest is not so black. There is nothing in the world so black as thy hair.
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Oscar Wilde |
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eba8f46
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Down the long and silent street,
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Oscar Wilde |
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fc2d74a
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To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all
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Oscar Wilde |
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c19ef72
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Miss Prism: Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days. Cecily: Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you are! I hope it did not end happily? I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much. Miss Prism: The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.
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Oscar Wilde |
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fb78fd9
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It's most dangerous nowadays for a husband to pay any attention to his wife in public. It always makes people think that he beats her when they are alone. The world has grown so suspicious of anything that looks like a happy married life.
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Oscar Wilde |
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242a899
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Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil, cried Dorian with a wild gesture of despair.
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Oscar Wilde |
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4f4f152
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It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. It is when we are wounded by our own hands that love should come to cure us. Else what use is love at all?
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Oscar Wilde |
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33e4150
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Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.
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Oscar Wilde |
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dca3df8
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It's absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.
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Oscar Wilde |
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e8c8c36
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The fatal errors of life are not due to man's being unreasonable: an unreasonable moment may be one's finest moment. They are due to man's being logical.
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Oscar Wilde |
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6a90ede
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What a silly thing Love is. It is not as useful as Logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always telling one of things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true. In fact, it is quite unpractical, and, as in this age to be practical is everything, I shall go back to Philosophy and study Metaphysics.
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Oscar Wilde |
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798c3b9
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For a year after that was done to me I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time. That is not such a tragic thing as possibly it sounds to you. To those who are in prison tears are a part of every day's experience. A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not a day on which one's heart is happy.
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Oscar Wilde |
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a43ce4e
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When first I was put into prison some people advised me to try and forget who I was. It was ruinous advice. It is only by realising what I am that I have found comfort of any kind. Now I am advised by others to try on my release to forget that I have ever been in a prison at all. I know that would be equally fatal. It would mean that I would always be haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace, and that those things that are meant for me a..
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Oscar Wilde |
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1a534c5
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If one were to live his life fully and completely were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream.
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Oscar Wilde |
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8c551a6
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How sad it is!" murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June... . If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that--for that--I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole wo..
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Oscar Wilde |
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5efb719
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Well, I don't like your clothes. You look perfectly ridiculous in them. Why on earth don't you go up and change? It's perfectly childish to be in mourning for a man who is actually staying a whole week with you in your house as a guest. I call it grotesque.
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oscar-wilde
the-importance-of-being-earnest
jack
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Oscar Wilde |
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714a5fa
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I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me
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Oscar Wilde |
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97dfda9
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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 to watch the Sun in his chariot of gold, and the Moon in her chariot of pearl. Sweet is the scent of the 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 ..
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Oscar Wilde |
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f0eb470
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I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men, and the colour of things: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all things in a phrase, all existence in an epigram: whatever I touched I made beautiful
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literature
beauty
philosophy
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Oscar Wilde |
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81b2b39
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Women treat us [men] like humanity treats gods - they worship us and keep bothering us to do something.
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humour
mythology
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Oscar Wilde |
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a931daf
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We know not whether laws be right Or whether laws be wrong All we know who lie in gaol Is that the walls are strong And each day is like a year A year whose days are long.
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Oscar Wilde |