Oscar Wilde Quotes - Page 11

because to influence a person is to give one's own soul.

The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure.

To become the spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.

The one charm about the past is that it is the past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen. They always want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over, they propose to continue it. If they were allowed their own way, every comedy would have a tragic ending, and every tragedy would culminate in a farce. They are charmingly artificial, but they have no sense of art.

Nay, without thought or conscious desire, might not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and passions, atom calling to atom in secret love or strange affinity?

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.

Give women the right opportunities and they are capable of everything.

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely if ever do they forgive them.

It is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.

I have a business appointment that I am anxious... to miss.

You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one.

Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

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 one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked.

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast,

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional.

I hope you have not been leading a double life pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

There were opium-dens, where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new.

I give the truths of to-morrow.""I prefer the mistakes of today.

It takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it. And even more courage to see it in the one you love

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.

The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.

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.

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can you want?

It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.

Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves and fibers and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams.

Life has always poppies in her hands.

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.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves By each 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.

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

The mimicry of passion is the most intolerable of all poses.

We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.

Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.

A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.

Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.

Yet ruled he not long, so great had been his suffering, and so bitter the fire of his testing, for after the space of three years he died. And he who came after him ruled evilly.

You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of life, of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing. You lost life's secret.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.

But somehow, I feel sure that if I lived in the country for six months, I should become so unsophisticated that no one would take the slightest notice of me.

To influence a person is to give him one's own soul.

Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about.

Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it.

Nichts Interessantes ist jemals richtig.

I have nothing to declare except my genius.

Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.

Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman

For what is truth? In matters of relogion, it is simply the opinion that has survived. In matters of science, it is the ultimate sensation. In matters of art, it is one's last mood.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.