Oscar Wilde Quotes - Page 3

For he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die.

That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography, as it deals not with events, but with the thoughts of one's life; not with life's physical accidents of deed or circumstance, but with the spiritual moods and imaginative passions of the mind...The best that one can say of most modern creative art is that it is just a little less vulgar than reality, and so the critic, with his fine sense of distinction and sure instinct of delicate refinement, will prefer to look into the silver mirror or through the woven veil, and will turn his eyes away from the chaos and clamor of actual existence, though the mirror be tarnished and the veil be torn. His sole aim is to chronicle his own impressions. It is for him that pictures are painted, books written, and marble hewn into form.

Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.

I am not young enough to know everything.

Are ALL men bad?Oh, all of them, my dear, all of them, without any exception. And they never grow any better. Men become old, but they never become good..

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.

The burden of this world is too great for one man to bear, and the world’s sorrow too heavy for one heart to suffer.

There was something tragic in a friendship so colored by romance.

Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.

Most personalities have been obliged to be rebels. Half their strength has been wasted in friction.

Intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing.

I am very pleased you like my stories. They are studies in prose, put for Romance's sake into fanciful form: meant partly for children, and partly for those who have kept the childlike faculties of wonder and joy, and who find simplicity in a subtle strangeness.

Ah! Happy they whose hearts can breakAnd peace of pardon win!How else may man make straight his pathAnd cleanse his soul from sin?How else but through a broken heartMay the Lord Christ enter in?

Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

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.

Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

My dear fellow, it isn't easy to be anything nowadays. There's such a lot of beastly competition about.

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.

Every one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is asacrament that should be taken kneeling.

Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool.

His principles were out of date, but there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices.

I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

Pleasure is the only thing one should live for, nothing ages like happiness.

She is a peacock in everything but beauty!

The Number our envious Persons, confirmation our capability.

Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.

One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.

I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.

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.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.

The world loves the Saint, and Christ loves the sinner.

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.

Hearts Live By Being Wounded

To realise one's nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for.

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.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

With slouch and swing around the ringWe trod the Fools’ Parade!We did not care: we knew we wereThe Devils’ Own Brigade:And shaven head and feet of leadMake a merry masquerade.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

It is always painful to part from people whom one has known for a brief space of time. The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity, But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable.

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.

I never saw anybody take so long to dress, and with such little result.

People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.

It is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought.

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. World's had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow...

The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her latest wonder.

The arts that have escaped [uniformity] best are the arts in which the public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it.

. . . try as we may we cannot get behind things to the reality. And the terrible reason may be that there is no reality in things apart from their appearances.

My great mistake the fault for which I can't forgive myself is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.

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.

It is very wrong to kill any one[.]""Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!

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.

A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me.

A flower blossoms for its own joy.

If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first.

I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous.

Travel improves the mind wonderfully, and does away with all one’s prejudices.

Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. What this century worships is wealth. The God of this century is wealth. To succeed one must have wealth. At all costs one must have wealth.