Oscar Wilde Quotes - Page 6

The play was a great success but the audience was a disaster.

In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.

Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul?

The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial.

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

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

Lord Henry smiled. "He gives you good advice, I suppose. People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves.

A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.

If a woman cannot make her mistakes charming, she is only a female.

It is in the brain that the poppy is red, that the apple is odorous, that the skylark sings.

You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of color 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.

Bad artists always admire each others work.

Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable

I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.

Irony is wasted on the stupid

How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?

Within this restless, hurried, modern worldWe took our hearts' full pleasure - You and I,And now the white sails of our ship are furled,And spent the lading of our argosy.Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan,For very weeping is my gladness fled,Sorrow has paled my young mouth's vermilion,And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.But all this crowded life has been to theeNo more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spellOf viols, or the music of the seaThat sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell.

Or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do things finer than we are ourselves?

The best way to make children good is to make them happy.

Men know life too early women know life too late.

Always! That is the dreadful word ... it is a meaningless word too.

Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather an other chaos, that it created in us. Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?

To most of us the real life is the life we do not lead.

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

Lady Bracknell, I hate to seem inquisitive, but would you kindly inform me who I am?

There is no Mystery so great as Misery.

it is a marvel that those red-roseleaf lips of yours should be made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing.

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

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.

All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.

Always forgive your enemies nothing annoys them so much.

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.

Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.

Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.

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

They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about.

The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.

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!

A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.

It is the duty of every father... to write fairy tales for his children.

What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices.

Utterly, irrevocably, lost

Imagination is a quality that was given to man compensate him from whats not. The sense of humor was given to console him from what is.

In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.

The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.

Anybody can have common sense, povided that they have no imagination

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…

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants and the other is getting it.

It is only about things that do not interest one, that one can give a really unbiassed opinion; and this is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always valueless.

Realize your youth while you have it. Don’t squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing

Don't be led astray into the paths of virtue.

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.

Every great man nowadays has his disciples and it is always Judas who writes the biography.

Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they're better.

Punctuality is the thief of time.

Indeed, as a rule, everybody turns out to be somebody else.

My life-my whole life- take it, and do with it what you will. I love you-love you as I have never loved any living thing. From the moment I met you I loved you, loved you blindly, adoringly,madly!You didn't know it then-you know it now.