Book detail: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde is a definitive compilation of the author's extensive and varied writings. It encompasses his most renowned novels, such as "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and "Lady Windermere's Fan", as well as a selection of his short stories, poetry, essays, and plays. This collection provides a comprehensive view of Wilde's literary genius and his influence on Victorian literature.
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“Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“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.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“Bad artists always admire each others work.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then, and then only, does it comes into existence.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“The one charm about the past is that it is the past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare’s plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was a real joy in that - perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world… And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“Beauty is a form of Genius--is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in the dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“No woman should have a memory. Memory in a woman is the beginning of dowdiness. One can always tell from a woman's bonnet whether she has got a memory or not.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don't think it right.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“The burden of this world is too great for one man to bear, and the world’s sorrow too heavy for one heart to suffer.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colourless.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“A mask tells us more than a face.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true. That is the fatality of faith, and the lesson of romance.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“Alone, and without any reference to his neighbours, without any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“Be happy, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart's-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“To have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“If you meet at dinner a man who has spent his life in educating himself - a rare type in our time ... you rise from table richer, and conscious that a high ideal has for a moment touched and sanctified your days. But Oh! my dear Ernest, to sit next to a man who has spent his life in trying to educate others! What a dreadful experience that is!”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“When people talk to us about others they are usually dull. When they talk to us about themselves they are nearly always interesting.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“Everyone is born a king, and most people die in exile.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“To look at a thing is very different from seeing it.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those he has selected.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“While one should always study the method of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely universal. The first personality, which no one should copy.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“To toil for a hard master is bitter, but to have no master to toil for is more bitter still.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“It is exactly because a man cannot do a thing that he is a proper judge of it”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any
conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into
weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the
ideal at all you must not strip it of vitality. You must find it in life and re-create it in art.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institutions of private property.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“Find expression for a sorrow, and it will become dear to you. Find expression for a joy, and you will intensify its ecstasy.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“What is mind but motion in the intellectual sphere?”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“The cities of America are inexpressibly tedious. The Bostonians take their learning too sadly; culture with them is an accomplishment rather than an atmosphere; their Hub, as they call it, is the paradise of prigs. Chicago is a sort of monster-shop, full of bustles and bores. Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry. Baltimore is amusing for a week, but Philadelphia is dreadfully provincial; and though one can dine in New York one could not dwell there.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays