Oscar Wilde Quotes - Page 13

Every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character.

No good deed goes unpunished.

I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.

We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.

Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.

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.

To get into the best society nowadays one has either to feed people amuse people or shock people.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

A book or poem which has no pity in it had better not be written.

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.

in every pleasure, cruelty has its place...

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

The drawback of stealing a thing, is that one never knows how wonderful the thing that one steals is.

You don't seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none.

The curves of your lips rewrite history.

If it was my business, I wouldn't talk about it. It is very vulgar to talk about one's business. Only people like stockbroker's do that, and then merely at dinner parties.

Dorian, Dorian," she cried, "before I knew you, acting was the one reality of my life. It was only in the theatre that I lived. I thought that it was all true. I was Rosalind one night and Portia the other. The joy of Beatrice was my joy, and the sorrows of Cordelia were mine also. I believed in everything. The common people who acted with me seemed to me to be godlike. The painted scenes were my world. I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real. You came—oh, my beautiful love!— and you freed my soul from prison. 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. You had brought me something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection.

Art, even the art of fullest scope and widest vision, can never really show us the external world. All that it shows us is our own soul, the one world of which we have any real cognisance. And the soul itself, the soul of each one of us, is to each one of us a mystery. It hides in the dark and broods, and consciousness cannot tell us of its workings. Consciousness, indeed, is quite inadequate to explain the contents of personality. It is Art, and Art only, that reveals us to ourselves.

Things are in their essence what we choose to make them. A thing is according to the mode in which one looks at it.

In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.

Great passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be seen only by those who are on a level with them

As for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.

Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.

the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.

People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately.

As long as war is regarded as wicked it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar it will cease to be popular.

God and other artists are always a little obscure.....

It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us.

Moral grounds are always the last refuge of people who have no sense of beauty.

I don't want to earn a living, I want to live.

Oh, I can't explain. 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. 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 daresay, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one's life.

But neither milk-white rose nor red May bloom in prison air;The shard, the pebble, and the flint, Are what they give us there:For flowers have been known to heal A common man's despair.

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.

America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier in history than itself.

Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that

MISS PRISMMemory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us.

The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he'll tell you the truth

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion enmity worship love but no friendship.

The aim of life is self-development

When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.

The English novels are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. But one should not be too severe on them. They show a want of knowledge that must be the result of years of study.

Friendship...is not something you learn in school,but if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship you really haven't learned anything.

There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.

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.

When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.

At every single moment of one's life one is going to be no less than what one has been.