Tuesday 20 October 2009

Oscar Wilde quotes

"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information."
- Oscar Wilde

"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

"A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction."

"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it."

"All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling."

"Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known."

"Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to."

"Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future."

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."

"I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability."

"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all."

"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."

"Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about."

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

"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."

"No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly."

"Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both."

"Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals."

"The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you."

"The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast."

"There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up."

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."

"A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her."

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."

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

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

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination."

"Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing."

"At twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets."

"Biography lends to death a new terror."

"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."

"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter."

"Genius is born--not paid."

"I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones."

"I am not young enough to know everything."

"I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability."

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."

"Illusion is the first of all pleasures."

"It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is fatal."

"Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace."

"Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event."

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

"Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays."

"One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation."

"One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards."

"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious."

"Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow."

"The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for."

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

"The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about."


"The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."

"There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing."

"To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity."

"We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities."


"We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow."


"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong."


"Why was I born with such contemporaries?"


"Wisdom comes with winters."


"One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar."


"The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated."

"The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived."


"I don't play accurately-any one can play accurately- but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life."


"When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers."


"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast."


"Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons."

"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."

"One's real life is often the life that one does not lead."


"I can resist anything except temptation."


"My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people's."

"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."


"Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes."


"Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality."


"What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

"Vile deeds like poison weeds bloom well in prison air, it is only what is good in man, that wastes and withers there."


"To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture."


"But what is the difference between literature and journalism?

... Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all."

"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."


"One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason."


"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."


"A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies."


"I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex."


"I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible."

"I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world."

"Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."


"The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional."


"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself."


"To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable."


"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written."

1 comment:

  1. God, I adore Wilde so much. :) I had no idea you had a blog, so happy to have discovered it. I'm ok thanks honeybunny. Did I PM you my email address? In case you want it, my_inbox@emailaccount.com

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