Oscar Wilde

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.

If one were to live his life fully and completely were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream.

A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.

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.

I beg your pardon I didn't recognise you - I've changed a lot.

The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ

Rugby is a good occasion for keeping thirty bullies far from the center of the city.

It is awfully hard work doing nothing.

An idea that isn't risky is hardly worth calling an idea.

Travel ennobles the spirit and does away with our prejudices.

The only thing worse than being misquoted is being sentenced to two years' hard labour for buggery

Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.

I find that forgiving one's enemies is a most curious morbid pleasure; perhaps I should check it.

The crude commercialism of America, its materialising spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man who, according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherry-tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature.

The Bostonians take their learning too sadly: culture with them is an accomplishment rather than an atmosphere; their \'Hub,\' as they call it, is the paradise of prigs.

Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry.

Don't tell me that you have exhausted Life. When a man says that, one knows that life has exhausted him.

A gentleman never offends unintentionally

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

As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.

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

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.

I am tired of myself to-night. I should like to be somebody else.

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.

How does one cure the soul? Through the senses

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

What of Art? -It is a malady. --Love? -An Illusion. --Religion? -The fashionable substitute for Belief. --You are a sceptic. -Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith. --What are you? -To define is to limit.

All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon.

It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.

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