Oscar Wilde

We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the brim - objects press around us, filling the mind with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death.

And now, I am dying beyond my means. (Said while sipping champagne on his deathbed.)

All trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are sentences of death.

It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.

To make men Socialists is nothing, but to make Socialism human is a great thing.

Marriage is a long, dull meal with dessert served at the beginning.

It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it.

Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong.

If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation.

Bad manners make a journalist.

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

There is only one real tragedy in a woman's life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future invariably her husband.

Talk to a woman as if you loved her, and to a man as if he bored you.

The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him.

There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them...

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.

A person who, because he has corns himself, always treads on other people's toes.

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

Out of the sea will rise Behemoth and Leviathan, and sail 'round the high-pooped galleys... Dragons will wander about the waste places, and the phoenix will soar from her nest of fire into the air. We shall lay our hands upon the basilisk, and see the jewel in the toad's head. Champing his gilded oats, the Hippogriff will stand in our stalls, and over our heads will float the Blue Bird singing of beautiful and impossible things, of things that are lovely and that never happen, of things that are not and that should be.

Well, I don't like your clothes. You look perfectly ridiculous in them. Why on earth don't you go up and change? It's perfectly childish to be in mourning for a man who is actually staying a whole week with you in your house as a guest. I call it grotesque.

You are more to me than any of them has any idea; you are the atmosphere of beauty through which I see life; you are the incarnation of all lovely things...I think of you day and night. ~ Letter to Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas

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

Any place you love is the world to youЂќ, explained the pensive Catherine Wheel, who had been attached to an old deal box in early life, and prided herself on her broken heart; 'but love is not fashionable any more, the poets have killed it. They wrote so much about that nobody believed them, and I am not surprised. True love suffers, and is silent. I remember myself once- But it is no matter now. Romance is a thing of the past.

Death is a great price to pay for a red rose', cried the Nightingale, \'and Life is very dear to all. ' It is pleasant to sit in the green wood, and watch the Sun in his chariot of gold, and the Moon in her chariot of pearl. Sweet is the scent oft he hawthorn, and sweet are the bluebells that hide in the valley, and the heather that blows on the hill. Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?

you will always love, and you will always be loved

But whether I become a believer or remain an agnostic, my belief or disbelief must derive its source from within, not from without. I, myself, must create its symbols. The transcendental is that which produces its own form. I will never discover its secret if I do not find it in my own heart; if I do not possess it already I shall never be able to acquire it.

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

Never met such a Gorgon . . . I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair.

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

If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.