Oscar Wilde

To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.

Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which is never advisable.

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

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.

To get back one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies.

SalomГ©, SalomГ©, 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, SalomГ©, 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.

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.

Caricature is the tribute which mediocrity pays to genius.

There is no such thing as morality or immorality in thought. There is immoral emotion.

To be premature is to be perfect

Love is not fashionable anymore; the poets have killed it.

To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.

Do you really keep a diary? I'd give anything to look at it. May I? Oh, no. You see, it is simply a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form I hope you will order a copy.

Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity.

Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

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 artist is the creator of beautiful things. 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 great things in life are what they seem to be. And for that reason, strange as it may sound to you, often are very difficult to interpret (understand). Great passions are for the great of souls. Great events can only be seen by people who are on a level with them. We think we can have our visions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing visions have to be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine.

Nature: a place where birds fly around uncooked

Your machinery is beautiful. Your society people have apologized to me for the envious ridicule with which your newspapers have referred to me. Your newspapers are comic but never amusing. Your Water Tower is a castellated monstrosity with pepperboxes stuck all over it. I am amazed that any people could so abuse Gothic art and make a structure not like a water tower but like a tower of a medieval castle. It should be torn down. It is a shame to spend so much money on buildings with such an unsatisfactory result. Your c

Life is a nightmare that prevents one from sleeping.

Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memories.

Wisdom comes with winters

Oh, he occasionally takes an alcoholiday.

Love will fly if held too lightly Love will die if held too tightly . . .

Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a mauvais quart d'heure made up of exquisite moments.

Life! Life! Don't let us go to life for our fulfillment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic

The last person who ever crossed me is dead under my bed!!!

There is no such thing as a heterosexual male, only men who haven't met Oscar Wilde yet.