Oscar Wilde

Oscar was the great-nephew of author Charles Maturin, an Irish clergyman and author whose gothic novel "Melmoth the Wanderer" inspired Oscars pseudonym Sebastian Melmoth, which he lived under for three years from his release from prison to his death.

Sons: Cyril, born in June 1885, who died in World War I, and Vyvyan, born in November 1886. Vyvyan became a writer using the surname Holland, and his own grandson, Merlin Holland , has written two books about his grandfather, "Wilde Album" and "After Oscar: The Color of his Legacy." Merlins son Lucien is a classics major at Oxford, just like Oscar Wilde.

Appears on the sleeve of The Beatles "Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band" album.

Separated from his wife not long after their second child was born. Was a homosexual. Tried and convicted, alongside Alfred Taylor, a procurer of young men, in 1895 for indecent acts, as homosexuality was then outlawed in the UK. All of his possessions and property were confiscated following the ruling, which resulted in prison for the playwright. Moved to Paris after he finished his sentence and lived as a pauper, writing his autobiography and works that never found an audience. Died in a cheap Paris hotel.

He published several books of stories for children, originally written for his own sons.

Relying on the generosity of friends, he went to live in France, adopting the name of Sebastian Melmoth.

Wilde attempted to woo the son of the Marquess of Queensberry, and Lord Queensberry retaliated by circulating a note which accused Wilde of Sodomy. Wilde sued for libel, but after three days in court, he realized he was losing, and he dropped the suit.

Both Wilde and his procurer (of young boys) were tried twice for "public indecency". The first trial ended in a hung jury. The second convicted him.

Wilde served two years at hard labor for public indecency.

Portrayed by link=nm0000410 in link=tt0120514.

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

I adore persons better than principles and persons with no principles,more than anything else in the world.

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

Men can be analyzed, women . . . merely adored.

I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to,time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell,without laughing.

[on his deathbed in a Paris hotel room] Either this wallpaper goes, or I,do!,The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world,its own shame.

Only the shallow know themselves.

[upon taking a glass of champagne on his deathbed] I am dying beyond my,means.

The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely,nothing.

The world mocks at it and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.

She wore too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is,always a sign of despair in a woman.

Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.

I am not young enough to know everything.

Imagination is a quality given a man to compensate him for what he is,not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for,the people.

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint,has a past and every sinner has a future.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

Women have a much better time than men in this world. There are far more,things forbidden to them,[Upon arriving at US Customs in 1882] I have nothing to declare except,my genius.

Anybody can be good in the country.

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

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

Crying is the refuge of plain women, but the ruin of pretty ones.

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

Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover,everything except the obvious.

Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be,faithless, and cannot.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.

We Irish are too poetical to be poets; we are a nation of brilliant,failures, but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks.

The public has an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what,is worth knowing.

Moderation is a fatal thing. . . nothing succeeds like excess.

It is only the shallow people who do not judge by appearance.

Bernard Shaw has no enemies but is intensely disliked by his friends.

[on fellow writer Emile Zola] Mr. Zola is determined to show that, if he,has not got genius, he can at least be dull.

The young are always ready to give to those who are older than,themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.

Make people laugh when you tell them the truth, or they will kill you.

Seriousness is the last refuge of the shallow.

Man is many things, but he is not rational.

The conscience of an editor is purely decorative.

The worst Slave Owners were kind to their Slaves.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well,written, or badly written. That is all.

Some cause happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go.

The heart was made to be broken.

The very essence of romance is uncertainty.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

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

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and a richness to life that nothing else can bring.

Hearts Live By Being Wounded,A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

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.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

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

Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.

To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.

I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life.

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.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

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

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.

What fire does not destroy, it hardens,Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.

I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

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

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

I have nothing to declare except my genius.

No good deed goes unpunished.

I like men who have a future and women who have a past.

The world is a stage and the play is badly cast.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

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

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

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

Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything. Yes, murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-hole in his coat; and when they grow older they know it.

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

One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.

I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else.

The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain.

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

You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

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

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

Even things that are true can be proved.

She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.

Women have no appreciation of good looks-at least, good women have not.

The public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. . . . A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions--one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true.

Nichts Interessantes ist jemals richtig.

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.

Religion does not help me. The faith that others give to what is unseen, I give to what one can touch, and look at. My gods dwell in temples made with hands; and within the circle of actual experience is my creed made perfect and complete: too complete, it may be, for like many or all of those who have placed their heaven in this earth, I have found in it not merely the beauty of heaven, but the horror of hell also.

Every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every human being should be the realisation of some ideal, either in the mind of God or in the mind of man.

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.

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.

With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

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

Die Welt ist von Narren geschaffen, damit Weise in ihr Leben.

A flower blossoms for its own joy.

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

The only horrible thing in the world is ennui.

I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream - I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of medievalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal - to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals.

She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.

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

Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.

I had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel.

He is fairer than the morning star, and whiter than the moon. For his body I would give my soul, and for his love I would surrender heaven.

The curves of your lips rewrite history.

something was dead in each of us,and what was dead was hope.

Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.

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

My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.

It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free.

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

I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare’s plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.

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

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.

So much had been surrendered! And to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape (. . . ),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. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

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.

Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.

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

Would you like to know the great drama of my life? It is that I have put my genius into my life. . . I have put only my talent into my works.

The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

If you want to be a doormat you have to lay yourself down first.

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

Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.

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.

nothing that is worth knowing can be taught,The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing.

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.

What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise,You can never be overdressed or overeducated.

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.

We all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man - that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.

Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.

The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

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

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.

Punctuality is the thief of time,Time is a waste of money.

The gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes bring you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses.

Punctuality is the thief of time.

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

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

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

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb. American novels, answered Lord Henry.

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

Most people are boring and stupid.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating- people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

It would be unfair to expect other people to be as brilliant as oneself.

In war, the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich makes slaves of the poor.

Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

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

The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realize through that sin his true perfection.

He wants to enslave you. 'I shudder at the thought of being free.

Man is complete in himself. When they go into the world, the world will disagree with them. That is inevitable. The world hates Individualism. But that is not to trouble them. They are to be calm and self-centred. If a man takes their cloak, they are to give him their coat, just to show that material things are of no importance. If people abuse them, they are not to answer back. What does it signify? The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realise through that sin his true perfection.

Crying is for plain women. Pretty women go shopping.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

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

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

I have no objection to anyone’s sex life as long as they don’t practice it in the street and frighten the horses.

Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman,Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

Women treat us [men] like humanity treats gods – they worship us and keep bothering us to do something.

Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!,Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast,Lady Bracknell, I hate to seem inquisitive, but would you kindly inform me who I am?,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.

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her daughter, she is perfectly satisfied,Women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders.

I am sick of women who love one. Women who hate one are much more interesting.

Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.

Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. It is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image precious.

A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.

LADY BRACKNELLThirty-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.

She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. It is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image precious. Her feet are very pretty, but they are not feet of clay. White porcelain feet, if you like. They have been through the fire, and what fire does not destroy, it hardens. She has had experiences.

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

The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.

But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.

Beauty is a form of Genius--is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in the dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.

People say sometimes that Beauty is superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

She is a peacock in everything but beauty!,I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly!,I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.

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

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 world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!,Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Of course to one so modern as I am, `Enfant de mon siècle,’ merely to look at the world will be always lovely. 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. Linnaeus fell on his knees and wept for joy when he saw for the first time the long heath of some English upland made yellow with the tawny aromatic brooms of the common furze; and I know that for me, to whom flowers are part of desire, there are tears waiting in the petals of some rose. It has always been so with me from my boyhood. There is not a single colour hidden away in the chalice of a flower, or the curve of a shell, to which, by some subtle sympathy with the very soul of things, my nature does not answer. Like Gautier, I have always been one of those ‘pour qui le monde visible existe.

Even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less then Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable.

Cold were the lips, yet he kissed them. Salt was the honey of the hair, yet he tasted it with a bitter joy. He kissed the closed eyelids, and the wild spray that lay upon their cups was less salt than his tears. And to the dead thing he made confession. Into the shells of its ears he poured the harsh wine of his tale. He put the little hands round his neck, and with his fingers he touched the thin reed of the throat. Bitter, bitter was his joy, and full of strange gladness was his pain.

Beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins,Inteligence lives longer than beauty.

. . . art had no moral responsibility. Art, he argued, should strive only to be a beautiful object entirely separate from its creator.

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

I drink to separate my body from my soul.

To be really mediæval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes.

What men call the shadow of the body is not the shadow of the body, but is the body of the soul.

So with curious eyes and sick surmiseWe watched him day by day,And wondered if each one of usWould end the self-same way,For none can tell to what red HellHis sightless soul may stray.

The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?,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.

And the young Fisherman said to himself: "How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that the Soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver.

A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between Art and Nature.

Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance.

Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.

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

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

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

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

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.

When bankers get together for dinner, they discuss Art. When artists get together for dinner, they discuss Money,An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.

What art seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.

Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.

Spontaneity is a meticulously prepared art,God and other artists are always a little obscure. . . . .

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals 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.

For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it. It should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as its unreality, and should combine the insincere character of a romantic play with the wit and beauty that make such plays delightful to us.

Art creates an incomparable and unique effect, and, having done so, passes on to other things. Nature, upon the other hand, forgetting that that imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeating this effect until we all become absolutely wearied of it.

It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.

Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming about him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense. The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists give everything to their art, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in themselves. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures.

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.

To call an artist morbid because he deals with morbidity as his subject-matter is as silly as if one called Shakespeare mad because he wrote ‘King Lear.

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.

Truth in art is the unity of a thing with itself,The greatest events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow out in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion. We reject the burden of their memory, and have anodynes against them. But the little things, the things of no moment, remain with us.

To become a work of art is the object of living.

If something cannot be done to check, or at least to modify, our monstrous worship of facts, art will become sterile and beauty will pass away from the land.

I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.

As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.

The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence.

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

The ages live in history through their anachronisms.

The Noblest form of Affection,The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it.

It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way.

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.

It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little. I discern great sanity in the Greek attitude. They never chattered about sunsets, or discussed whether the shadows on the grass were really mauve or not. But they saw that the sea was for the swimmer, and the sand for the feet of the runner. They loved the trees for the shadow that they cast, and the forest for its silence at noon.

Life has always poppies in her hands.

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

The evolution of man is slow. The injustice of men is great.

The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace.

A lily-girl, not made for this world’s pain.

Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.

Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.

It is he who has broken the bond of marriage - not I. I only break its bondage.

After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one’s tears.

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.

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.

It was always once springtime in my heart.

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

From the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul brain and power.

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.

[Letter to William Ward, 11 July 1878]Dear Boy, Why don’t you write to me? I don’t know what has become of you. As for me I am ruined. The law suit is going against me and I am afraid I will have to pay costs, which means leaving Oxford and doing some horrid work to earn bread. The world is too much for me. However, I have seen Greece and had some golden days of youth. I go back to Oxford immediately for viva voce and then think of rowing up the river to town with Frank Miles. Will you come? YoursOscar,Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.

The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.

His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion.

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?,You will always be loved, and you will always be in love with love. A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do.

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.

It is simply expression, as Henry says, that gives reality to things.

Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known,Life at times loses its sense of reality; it appears to us like a weird, optical illusion - a phantasmagoric bubble that will disappear at the slightest breath.

Perhaps in nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its place.

There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses.

So overjoyed were they at their deliverance that they laughed aloud, and the Earth seemed to them like a flower of silver, and the Moon like a flower of gold.

I had a strange feeling that Fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows.

The girl laughed again. The joy of a caged bird was in her voice.

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everybody in good society holds exactly the same opinions.

Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef.

We live, I regret to say, in an age of surfaces,Society--civilized society, at least--is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef . . . Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrees. . .

Man is many things, but he is not rational.

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

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

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read,Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

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

To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.

I wrote when I did not know life;now that I know life, I have no more to say.

Journalism is unreadable, and literature is unread.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility.

Yet one had ancestors in literature as well as in one’s own race, nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly with an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious. There were times when it appeared to Dorian Gray that the whole of history was merely the record of his own life, not as he had lived in act and circumstance, but as his imagination had created it for him, as if it had been in his brain and in his passions. He felt that he had known them all, those strange terrible figures that had passed across the stage of the world and made sin so marvellous and evil so full of subtlety. It seemed to him that in some mysterious way their lives had been his own.

Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. . .

Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain.

All I want now is to look at life.

And, certainly to him Life itself was the first, the greatest, of the arts, and for it all the other arts seemed to be but a preparation.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

You came to me to learn the Pleasure of Life and the Pleasure of Art. Perhaps I am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful, the meaning of Sorrow and its beauty.

Utterly, irrevocably, lost,A strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come between them. . . . His eyes darkened, and the crowded, flaring streets became blurred to his eyes. When the cab drew up at the theatre, it seemed to him that he had grown years older.

It is only when one has lost all things, that one knows that one possesses it,A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.

How pale the Princess is! Never have I seen her so pale. She is like the shadow of a white rose in a mirror of silver.

All I want to do now is look at life. You may come and look at it with me, if you care to.

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

My dear boy, the people who only love once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect—simply a confession of failures.

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.

The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination,made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain,danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks.

In the strangely simple economy of the world people only get what they give, and to those who have not enough imagination to penetrate the mere outward of things and feel pity, what pity can be given save that of scorn?,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.

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.

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. .

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

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.

The one charm about the past is that it is the past.

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

Silently we went round and round,And through each hollow mindThe memory of dreadful thingsRushed like a dreadful wind,And horror stalked before each man,And terror crept behind.

Bronze-limbed and well-knit, like a statue wrought by a Grecian, he stood on the sand with his back to the moon, and out of the foam came white arms that beckoned to him, and out of the waves rose dim forms that did him homage. Before him lay his shadow, which was the body of his Soul, and behind him hung the moon in the honey-coloured air.

The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.

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

If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life but what I will call the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward.

In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.

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.

But we who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments. We have nothing else to think of. Suffering ― curious as it may sound to you ― is the means by which we exist, because it is the only means by which we become conscious of existing; and the remembrance of suffering in the past is necessary to us as the warrant, the evidence, of our continued identity.

And yet it was not the mystery, but the comedy of suffering that struck him; its absolute uselessness, its grotesque want of meaning. How incoherent everything seemed! How lacking in all harmony! He was amazed at the discord between the shallow optimism of the day, and the real facts of existence. He was still very young.

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

Failure is only the name that we give to our mistakes. "-Oscar Wilde,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.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.

The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.

There is no Mystery so great as Misery.

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

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

You are not listening to a word I am saying and I am making the most delightful plans for your future.

Men always want to be a woman’s first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about these things. What (women) like is to be a man’s last romance.

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

Bad artists always admire each others work.

They have been eating muffins. That looks like repentance.

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

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.

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

A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.

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.

And when wind and winter hardenAll the loveless land,It will whisper of the garden,You will understand.

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.

Or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do things finer than we are ourselves?,Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

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.

Experience is a question of instinct about life.

Experience is the name we give to our mistakes.

Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.

Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

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

To him, man was a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead.

Men always want to be a woman`s first love - women like to be a man`s last romance.

Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.

Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

Morality does not help me. I am a born antinomian. I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes. It is well to have learned that.

You come down here to console me. That is charming of you. You find me consoled, and you are furious. How like a sympathetic person!,Moral grounds are always the last refuge of people who have no sense of beauty.

Morality does not help me. I am a born antinomian. . . I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does. I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes.

Memory is the diary we all carry about with us.

The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plentitude.

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.

I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever.

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

I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.

And if life be, as it surely is, a problem to me, I am no less a problem to life.

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?,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.

One could never pay too high a price for any sensation.

You are unjust to women in England. And till you count what is a a shame in a woman to be an infamy in a man, you will always be unjust, and Right, that pillar of fire, and Wrong, that pillar of cloud, will be made dim to your eyes, or be not seen at all, or if seen, not regarded.

One knows so well the popular idea of health: the English country gentleman galloping after a fox - the unspeakable in full pursuit of the unbeatable.

Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others. Health is the primary duty of life.

You are perfectly right in making some slight alteration. Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

Because sometimes you have to do something bad to do something good.

You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.

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

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.

loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin.

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

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

lines 132-140),If a woman cannot make her mistakes charming, she is only a female.

The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole.

Most people live for love and admiration. But it is by love and admiration that one should live. If any love is shown us we should recognize that we are quite unworthy of it. Nobody is worthy to be loved. . . or if that phrase is a bitter one to bear, let us say that everyone is worthy of love, except him who thinks he is. Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling. .

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

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.

Dear little Swallow,’ said the Prince, ‘you tell me of marvelous things, but more marvelous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery.

If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart.

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

The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.

But youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.

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

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.

What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts.

Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

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.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

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

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

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

We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.

It is very difficult sometimes to keep awake, especially at church, but there is no difficulty at all about sleeping.

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

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

The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.

I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.

I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience.

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.

Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things,A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public are to him non-existent,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.

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.

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.

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,I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.

I am not young enough to know everything.

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.

Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. . . The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plentitude.

There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking other people to live as one wishes to live.

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.

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

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

Irony is wasted on the stupid,I hardly think that any Socialist, nowadays, would seriously propose that an inspector should call every morning at each house to see that each citizen rose up and did manual labour for eight hours.

You cut life to pieces with your epigrams.

Indifference is the revenge the world takes on mediocrities.

Salomé, Salomé, dance for me. I pray thee dance for me. I am sad to-night. Yes, I am passing sad to-night. When I came hither I slipped in blood, which is an evil omen; and I heard, I am sure I heard in the air a beating of wings, a beating of giant wings. I cannot tell what they mean . . . . I am sad to-night. Therefore dance for me. Dance for me, Salomé, I beseech you. If you dance for me you may ask of me what you will, and I will give it you, even unto the half of my kingdom.

The aim of life is self-development,I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection.

The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.

My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.

I have learned this: it is not what one does that is wrong, but what one becomes as a consequence of it.

The well bred contradict other people. the wise contradict themselves.

Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

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

There is nothing like race, is there?,How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?,It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.

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.

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.

I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

JACKYour duty as a gentleman calls you back. ALGERNONMy duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.

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.

I threw the pearl of my soul into a cup of wine. I went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes. I lived on honeycomb.

The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives.

One has a right to judge a man by the effect he has over his friends.

My gods dwell in temples made with hands.

And Beauty is a form of Genius - is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation.

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.

No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented and rebellious, is probably a real personality, and has much in him. . . As for the virtuous poor. . . they have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very poor pottage.

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

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

People cry out against the sinner, yet it is not the sinful, but the stupid, who are our shame. There is no sin except stupidity.

The moon in her chariot of pearl,Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

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

One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.

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

Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear. Just as vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people. And falsehoods the truths of other people. Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself. To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.

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

Those whom the gods love grow young.

Great passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be seen only by those who are on a level with them,Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.

Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul?,Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

Now and then, however, he is horribly thoughtless, and seems to take a real delight in giving me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to some one who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer’s day.

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious,The doctors found out that Bunbury could not live, that is what I mean - so Bunbury died. He seems to have had great confidence in the opinion of his physicians. I am glad, however, that he made up his mind at the last to some definite course of action, and acted under proper medical advice.

Niagara . . . is the first disappointment in the married life of many Americans who spend their honeymoon there.

Yes; poor Bunbury is a dreadful invalid. Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shillyshallying with the question is absurd.

It was winter, and a night of bitter cold. The snow lay thick upon the ground, and upon the branches of the trees: the frost kept snapping the little twigs on either side of them, as they passed: and when they came to the Mountain-Torrent she was hanging motionless in air, for the Ice-King had kissed her.

Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us.

How you can sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless. ""Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them. ""I say it’s perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances.

It is the stupid and the ugly who have the best of it in this world,She. . . can talk brillantly upon any subject provided she knows nothing about it.

I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses anyone for asking any question - simple curiosity.

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

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.

What nonsense people talk about happy marriages!" exclaimed Lord Henry. " A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

He would never again tempt innocence. He would be good.

My Salome is a mystic the sister of Salammbô a Saint Thérèse who worships the moon.

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…,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.

She lives in the poetry she cannot write.

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

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.

He repeated her name over and over again. The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.

I will love you always, because you will always be worthy of love.

I love talking about nothing, father. It is the only thing I know anything about.

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

Ah! that is the great thing in life, to live the truth.

I have forgotten all about my school days. I have a vague impression that they were detestable.

There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were maladies so strange that one had to pass through them if one sought to understand their nature.

I can write no stately proemAs a prelude to my lay;From a poet to a poemI would dare to say. For if of these fallen petalsOne to you seem fair,Love will waft it till it settlesOn your hair. And when wind and winter hardenAll the loveless land,It will whisper of the garden,You will understand.

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

The pure and simple truth is, the truth is never pure and simple.

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are the artist’s materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feelings, the actor’s craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectators, and not life, that art really mirrors.

He was a man of most subtle and refined intellect. A man of culture, charm, and distinction. One of the most intellectual men I ever met. ""I prefer a gentlemanly fool any day. There is more to be said for stupidity than people imagine. Personally I have a great admiration for stupidity. It is a sort of fellow-feeling, I suppose.

the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failure. a,The drawback of stealing a thing, is that one never knows how wonderful the thing that one steals is.

For his mourners will be outcast menAnd outcasts always mourn. . .

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

She lives the poetry she cannot write.

Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that,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.

When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.

Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.

For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses.

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

And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.

There are works which wait, and which one does not understand for a long time; the reason is that they bring answers to questions which have not yet been raised; for the question often arrives a terribly long time after the answer.

So the swallow flew over the great city, and saw the rich making merry in their beautiful houses, while the beggars were sitting at the gates. He flew into dark lanes, and saw the white faces of starving children looking out listlessly at the black streets. . .

After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.

Bosie has insisted on stopping here for sandwiches. He is quite like a narcissus -- so white and gold. I will come either Wednesday or Thursday night to your rooms. Send me a line. Bosie is so tired: he lies like a hyacinth on the sofa, and I worship him. (letter from Oscar Wilde, 1892 - quoted from Love in a dark time by Colm Toibin),Alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, may produce all the effects of drunkenness.

I must confess that most modern mysticism seems to me to be simply a method of imparting useless knowledge in a form that no one can understand,Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given away. The ruby shall be redder than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as the great sea.

Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. It is a meaningless word, too.

JACK: I will be back in a few moments, dear Canon. Gwendolen! Wait here for me!GWENDOLEN: If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

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

Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood,I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.

The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism – are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease. They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life – educated men who live in the East End – coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.

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

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.

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

I could deny it if I liked. I could deny anything if I liked.

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

I cannot choose one hundred best books because I have only written five,The Number our envious Persons, confirmation our capability.

Lady Bracknell. Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well. Algernon. I’m feeling very well, Aunt Augusta. Lady Bracknell. That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.

Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.

The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork.

Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable,Deliver me from my disciples!,JACK. I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left. ALGERNON. We have. JACK. I should extremely like to meet them. What do they talk about?ALGERNON. The fools? Oh! about the clever people, of course. JACK. What fools!,One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.

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

There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch of the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.

Journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarist.

For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to 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.

There is a great deal to be said in favour of reading a novel backwards. The last page is as a rule the most interesting, and when one begins with the catastrophe or the dénouement one feels on pleasant terms of equality with the author. It is like going behind the scenes of a theatre. One is no longer taken in, and the hair-breadth escapes of the hero and the wild agonies of the heroine leave one absolutely unmoved. One knows the jealously guarded secret, and one can afford to smile at the quite unnecessary anxiety that the puppets of fiction always consider it their duty to display.

in every pleasure, cruelty has its place. . .

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

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

Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.

The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything.

(A country where) the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.

When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.

Good artists exist simply in what they make and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.

Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

By persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation.

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

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.

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

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

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

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.

When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.

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

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

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

Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

Education is an admirable thing but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

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

Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes.

I can believe anything provided it is incredible.

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

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

Always forgive your enemies nothing annoys them so much.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

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

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

Pleasure is the only thing to live for. Nothing ages like happiness.

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

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

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

When a love comes to an end weaklings cry efficient ones instantly find another love and the wise already have one in reserve.

Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern one is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly.

There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has the right to blame us.

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.

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.

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.

To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.

I am not young enough to know everything.

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

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.

Men know life too early women know life too late.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

Marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men disagree.

Men marry because they are tired women because they are curious: both are disappointed.

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

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.

Men become old but they never become good.

Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.

Pessimist - one who when he has the choice of two evils chooses both.

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

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

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible not the invisible.

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

A true gentlemen is one who is never unintentionally rude.

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

I know not whether laws be right Or whether laws be wrong All that we know who lie in gaol Is that the wall is strong And that each day is like a year A year whose days are long.

Only the shallow know themselves.

It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.

It is not the prisoners who need reformation it is the prisons.

To be on the alert is to live to be lulled into security is to die.

Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple and the simple thing is the right thing.

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

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

To have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact talk to every woman as if you loved her and to every man as if he bored you.

Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.

I can resist everything except temptation.

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

Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

Punctuality is the thief of time.

A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can you want?,A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

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.

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.

Ordinary riches can be stolen real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

There is no such thing as romance in our day women have become too brilliant nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back again.

Marco Polo had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rose-colored pearls in the mouths of the dead. A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over its loss.

When good Americans die, they go to Paris.

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

If there is anything more annoying in the world than having people talk about you, it is certainly having no one talk about you.

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

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.

In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances, invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

Some cause happiness wherever they go others whenever they go.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Women are made to be loved, not understood.

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.

I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.

Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But. . . it is better to be good than to be ugly.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.

How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.

There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.

The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.

Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

She is a peacock in everything but beauty.

Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods. Beauty is the symbol of symbols. Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses nothing. When it shows us itself, it shows us the whole fiery-coloured world.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

I can resist everything except temptation.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

All art is quite useless.

True friends stab you in the front.

An excellent man he has no enemies and none of his friends like him.

He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.

The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life now that I am old I know that it is.

If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.

Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.

Society exists only as a mental concept in the real world there are only individuals.

If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future. .