Oct 16, 1854 - Nov 30, 1900
was an Irish writer and poet
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Music is the art... which most completely realizes the artistic idea and is the condition to which all the other arts are constantly aspiring.
All thought is immoral. Its very essence is destruction. If you think of anything, you kill it. Nothing survives being thought of.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!
One should always be a little improbable.
Alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, may produce all the effects of drunkenness.
In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.
It is not wise to find symbols in everything that one sees. It makes life too full of terrors.
The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.
It is the stupid and the ugly who have the best of it in this world
Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.
Conformity is the last refuge of the unimaginitive
Where there is no love there is no understanding.
If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you.
Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.
Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.
Jack: Actually, I was found. Lady Bracknell: Found? Jack: Uh, yes, I was in... a handbag. Lady Bracknell: A handbag? Jack: Yes, it was... [makes gestures] Jack: an ordinary handbag.
It's the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.
Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be invited to cocktail parties.
The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously-and have somebody find out.
Grass is hard and lumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects.
And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand, The hand that held the steel: For only blood can wipe out blood, And only tears can heal
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?
Oscar Wilde was suing the Marquis of Queensbury in 1895 for libel accusing Wilde of homosexuality Counsel: Have you ever adored a young man madly? Wilde: I have never given adoration to anyone except myself.
When he takes the knife to the canvass the servants find him lying dead with a knife through is heart and \'withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage.\' and the portrait \'in all the wonders of his exquisite youth and beauty.\' p 349
Out of the unreal shadows of night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off... p 207
His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion.
Oh, I don't care about Jack. I don't care for anybody in the whole world but you. I love you, Cecily. You will marry me, won't you? You silly boy! Of course. Why, we have been engaged for the last three months. For the last three months?
