Oscar Wilde

Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.

He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals.

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.

Art, like Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous voices.

All art is quite useless.

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone.

Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

Conversation should touch everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing.

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.

Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all.

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

Formerly we used to canonize our heroes. The modern method is to vulgarize them. Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable.

People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all.

No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.

Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America.

The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.

It is he who has broken the bond of marriage -- not I. I only break its bondage.

Ambition is the last refuge of failure.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

Talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your first season you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.