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Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde Quotes

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Famous Oscar Wilde Quotes

“The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.”

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Book:Oscar Wilde The Dover Reader
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“Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.”

MenWorldDifferentRealPlaySufferingActorsLaughingComedyStageTearsMen And WomenTragedyCastsReal LifeFortunateShedMerryQualificationsJestPrince Hal
Book:The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
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“Good heavens, I suppose a man may eat his own muffins in his own garden." "But you have just said it was perfectly heartless to eat muffins!" "I said it was perfectly heartless of YOU under the circumstances. That is a very different thing." "That may be, but the muffins are the same!”

MenMaySaidDifferentHeavenCircumstancesGardenDifferent ThingsHeartlessMuffinsImportance Of Being Earnest
Book:Annotated The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People with English Grammar Exercises: by Oscar Wilde (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)
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“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.”

IfsMenFirstsStatesGovernmentLastsPoliticalEconomicTyrannySocialismPolitical PowerEconomic Power
Book:The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
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“There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature, that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination, and disobedience its charm.”

IfsMenWorldGivingEndsMomentsBodySeemsMovingChoicesPassionLosesSinBrainTakenTerribleConscienceMen And WomenInstinctCellsImpulseCharmRebellionFearfulFascinationDisobediencePsychologist
Book:The Picture of Dorian Gray: The Story of a Fashionable Young Man Who Sells His Soul for Eternal Youth and Beauty (Beloved Books Edition)
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“Death is a great price to pay for a red rose“, cried the Nightingale, "and Life is very dear to all. “ It is pleasant to sit in the green wood, and watch the Sun in his chariot of gold, and the Moon in her chariot of pearl. Sweet is the scent oft he hawthorn, and sweet are the bluebells that hide in the valley, and the heather that blows on the hill. Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?”

MenHeartLife IsLove IsPayWatchesSunSweetMoonBirdRedGoldGreenRoseDearBlowWoodsHillsPleasantValleysCriedScentPearlsNightingalesChariotsRed RoseHeathersBluebells
Book:Complete Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde
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“With subtle and finely-wrought temperaments it is always so. Their strong passions must either bruise or bend. They either slay the man, or themselves die. Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and the sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.”

MenDiesPassionStrongSorrowDestroyedSubtleShallowTemperamentBruisesPlenitudeStrong Passion
Book:The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)
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“Young men want to be faithful, and are not. Old men want to be faithless, and cannot.”

MenWantFunnyYoungMarriageFaithfulYoung ManOld ManWeddingBe A ManFidelityBeing FaithfulFaithlessDorian GreyPortrait Of Dorian Gray
Book:The Picture of Dorian Gray: The Story of a Fashionable Young Man Who Sells His Soul for Eternal Youth and Beauty (Beloved Books Edition)
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“Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword! Some kill their love when they are young, And some when they are old; Some strangle with the hands of Lust, Some with the hands of Gold: The kindest use a knife, because The dead so soon grow cold. Some love too little, some too long, Some sell, and others buy; Some do the deed with many tears, And some without a sigh: For each man kills the thing he loves, Yet each man does not die.”

MenLooksLittlesLongDoeUseHandsYoungDiesGrowsHeardTearsColdKissingGoldSellsBraveDeedsLustBitterCowardKnivesSighFlatteringBrave Man
Author:Oscar Wilde
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“It is quite true that I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man usually gives to a friend. Somehow, I had never loved a woman. I suppose I never had time. Perhaps, as Harry says, a really grande passion is the privilege of those who have nothing to do, and that is the use of the idle classes in a country”

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Book:The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts
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“Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. What this century worships is wealth. The God of this century is wealth. To succeed one must have wealth. At all costs one must have wealth.”

MenHappinessSuccessFightingWealthCenturyCostSucceedAmbitionWorshipWeaponsEvery Man
Book:Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Plays, the Poems, the Stories and the Essays Including De Profundis
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“It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”

PeopleMenWantYearsEndsUseEnjoyPleasureEmotionMastersSorrowMercyShallowSelf Mastery
Book:The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts
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“In war," answered the weaver, "the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor. We must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die. We toil for them all day long, and they heap up gold in their coffers, and our children fade away before their time, and the faces of those we love become hard and evil. We tread out the grapes, another drinks the wine. We sow the corn, and our own board is empty. We have chains, though no eye beholds them; and are slaves, though men call us free.”

MenLoveGivingMeanChildrenLongWarHardEyeAgeFacesDiesEvilStrongPoorRichDrinkEmptyWeakGoldOur ChildrenWineSlaveChainsBoardsFadesWagesToilCornGrapesFade AwayThose We LoveWeavers
Book:The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde
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“Jack? . . . No, there is very little music in the name Jack, if any at all, indeed. It does not thrill. It produces absolutely no vibrations . . . I have known several Jacks, and they all, without exception, were more than usually plain. Besides, Jack is a notorious domesticity for John! And I pity any woman who is married to a man called John. She would probably never be allowed to know the entrancing pleasure of a single moment’s solitude. The only really safe name is Ernest.”

IfsKnowsMenLittlesDoeMomentsNamesPleasureKnownProduceSolitudeSafeMarriedPityExceptionThrillVibrationsNotoriousDomesticity
Book:The Plays of Oscar Wilde
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“Love does not traffic in a marketplace, nor use a huckster's scales. Its joy, like the joy of the intellect, is to feel itself alive. The aim of Love is to love: no more, and no less. You were my enemy: such an enemy as no man ever had. I had given you all my life, and to gratify the lowest and most contemptible of all human passions, hatred and vanity and greed, you had thrown it away. In less than three years you had entirely ruined me in every point of view. For my own sake there was nothing for me to do but to love you.”

MenFeelsYearsHumansDoeUseJoyPassionThreeGivenMy OwnLove IsViewsEnemyAliveLove YouHatredAimGreedSakeIntellectPoint Of ViewScalesVanityThrownThree YearsTrafficLowestRuinedMarketplace
Author:Oscar Wilde
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“I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men, and the colour of things: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all things in a phrase, all existence in an epigram: whatever I touched I made beautiful”

MenMindArtMadePhilosophyBeautifulImaginationExistenceCenturyAll ThingsMythPhrasesColourTouchedLegendsAlteredEpigrams
Book:The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: De profundis,
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“A man's life is of more value than a woman's. It has larger issues, wider scope, greater ambitions. Our lives revolve in curves of emotions. It is upon lines of intellect that a man's life progresses. I have just learnt this, and much else with it, from Lord Goring. And I will not spoil your life for you, nor see you spoil it as a sacrifice to me, a useless sacrifice.”

MenLife IsValuesLinesEmotionLordIssuesGreaterOur LivesProgressSacrificeAmbitionIntellectUselessCurvesScopeSpoil
Book:Oscar Wilde - The Major Works
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“Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world. I cannot conceive of any other explanation. I am convinced that there is no other, and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul.”

IfsMenWorldWayKindHas BeensMadeSaidSoulBodyHandsSeemsPainBeautifulSufferingPleasureAmountSorrowBuiltPerfectionExtraordinaryConvincedExplanationStatureBeautiful SoulBeautiful Body
Book:The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde
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“But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think.”

ThinkingMenLooksRealEndsMomentsFacesCoursesChurchSuccessfulExpressionIntellectualHarmonyIntellectProfessionNosesForeheadsExaggerationHideousReal BeautySuccessful Man
Book:The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)
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“Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

MenGivingTruthHonestyDiscoveryOneselfSelf DiscoveryBeing YourselfTelling The TruthMaskFinding YourselfAbout YourselfBe YouDiscoveringTrue SelfKnow YourselfLiedDishonestyCriminal MindHonest ManKnow ThyselfAnonymityTruth And LiesHonest TruthTruth And HonestyTruth HonestyJust Being YouSelf KnowingLying MenTruth Be ToldSpiritual TruthDiscovering YourselfLies TruthTelling LiesBeing LiedDiscovering SelfSaying The TruthBusiness PlanningDiscovery In LifeTrue To OneselfDiscovering Your True SelfAlready TakenWearing A MaskHiding The TruthDishonesty And LyingLying To YourselfUnderstanding YourselfDiscovering The TruthTruth To YourselfTruth Revealed
Author:Oscar Wilde
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“LADY STUTFIELD I adore silent men. MRS ALLONBY Oh, Ernest isn't silent. He talks the whole time. But he has got no conversation. What he talks about I don't know. I haven't listened to him for years.”

KnowsMenYearsWholeHavensConversationSilentAdoreSilent Man
Book:The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays: Lady Windermere's Fan; Salome; A Woman of No Importance; An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest
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