Oscar Wilde

If you want to be witty, say what you think at all times

Nowadays, saying what you really think can be a serious error since one risks being misunderstood.

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.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimagininative.

The trouble with the lower classes is that they lack the sense of tragedy given to them by the upper classes.

The worst thing to do with success, is to boast about it.

The English public always feels perfectly at ease when a mediocrity is talking to it.

The aim of love is to love. No more, no less.

We spend our days, each one of us, in looking for the secret of life. Well, the secret of life is in Art.

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

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.

Perhaps there may come into my art also, no less than into my life, a still deeper note, one of greater unity of passion, and directness of impulse. Not width but intensity is the true aim of modern art. We are no longer in art concerned with the type. It is with the exception that we have to do. I cannot put my sufferings into any form they took, I need hardly say. Art only begins where Imitation ends, but something must come into my work, of fuller memory of words perhaps, of richer cadences, of more curious effects,

What a fuss people make about fidelity!\' exclaimed Lord Henry. \'Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say.

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.

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 dayЂ'mock me horribly!

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 thatЂ'for thatЂ'I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!

Far away beyond the pine-woods,' he answered, in a low dreamy voice, 'there is a little garden. There the grass grows long and deep, there are the great white stars of the hemlock flower, there the nightingale sings all night long. All night long he sings, and the cold, crystal moon looks down, and the yew-tree spreads out its giant arms over the sleepers.

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

You know I have loved him always. But we are very poor. Who, being loved, is poor? Oh, no one. I hate my riches. They are a burden...

Only love can keep anyone alive...

No woman should have a memory. Memory in a woman is the beginning of dowdiness. One can always tell from a woman's bonnet whether she has got a memory or not.

Nothing should be out of the reach of hope. Life is a hope.

I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules.

Do you know that I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world? Certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance.

Miss Prism: ... And you do not seem to reealize, dear Doctor, that by persistently remaining single, a man coverts himself into a permanent public temptation. ... Chausuble: But is a man not equally attractive when married? Miss Prism: No married man is ever attractive except to his wife. Chausuble: And often, IВґve been told, not even to her.

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.

The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one's clean linen in public.

The tragedy of growing old is not that one is old but that one is young.

It is a great mistake for men to give up paying compliments, for when they give up saying what is charming, they give up thinking what is charming.

He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression...