Oscar Wilde

My dear Arthur, I never talk scandal. I only talk gossip. What is the difference between scandal and gossip? Oh! Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.

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

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

Poor? What does that matter? When poverty creeps in at the door, love flies in through the window.

Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.

If we're always guided by other people's thoughts, what's the point in having our own?

He hasn't an enemy in the world, and none of his friend like him.

The exquisite art of idleness, one of the most important things that any University can teach.

In spite of the roaring of the young lions at the Union, and the screaming of the rabbits in the home of the vivisect, in spite of Keble College, and the tramways, and the sporting prints, Oxford still remains the most beautiful thing in England, and nowhere else are life and art so exquisitely blended, so perfectly made one.

The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful.

The mere mechanical technique of acting can be taught, but the spirit that is to give life to lifeless forms must be born in a man. No dramatic college can teach its pupils to think or to feel. It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.

It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.

Early in life she had discovered the important truth that nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion; and by a series of reckless escapades, half of them quite harmless, she had acquired all the privileges of a personality.

Nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion.

What is said of man is nothing; the point is, who says it.

It is only fair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always apologize to one in private for what they have written against one in public.

I have said to you to speak the truth is a painful thing. To be forced to tell lies is much worse.

There is a fatality about good resolutions Ђ' that they are always made too late

The ugly and stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live-- undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They never bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Henry; my brains, such as they are-- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks-- we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer te

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

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

We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful.

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement. Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman. When one is in love one always begins by deceiving oneself, and one always ends by deceiving others. This is what the world calls a romance.

The supreme object of life is to live. Few people live. It is true life only to realize one's own perfection, to make one's every dream a reality.

The best one can say of modern creative art is that it is just a little less vulgar than reality.

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

Give a man a mask and he'll tell you the truth.

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

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.