Oscar Wilde

“But you don’t really mean to say that you couldn’t love me if my name wasn’t Ernest?GWENDOLEN: But your name is Ernest.JACK: Yes, I know it is. But supposing it was something else? Do you mean to say you couldn’t love me then?GWENDOLEN (glibly): Ah! that is clearly a metaphysical speculation, and like most metaphysical speculations has very little reference at all to the actual facts of real life, as we know them.”

“The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable!”

“Everyone is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling.”

“The less said about life's sores the better.”

“Life is terrible. It rules us, we do not rule it.”

“Do you think that I would not have let you know that, if you suffered, I was suffering too: that if you wept there were tears in my eyes also: and that if you lay in the house of bondage and were despised of men, I out of my griefs had built a house in which to dwell until your coming, a treasury in which all that man had denied to you would be laid up for your healing, one hundredfold in increase?”

“From your silken hair to your delicate feet you are perfection to me. Pleasure hides love from us, but pain reveals it in its essence.”

“My sweet rose, my delicate flower, my lily of lilies, it is perhaps in prison that I am going to test the power of love. I am going to see if I cannot make the bitter warders sweet by the intensity of the love I bear you. I have had moments when I thought it would be wise to separate. Ah! Moments of weakness and madness! Now I see that would have mutilated my life, ruined my art, broken the musical chords which make a perfect soul. Even covered with mud I shall praise you, from the deepest abysses I shall cry to you. In my solitude you will be with me.”

“I love you, I love you, my heart is a rose which your love has brought to bloom, my life is a desert fanned by the delicious breeze of your breath, and whose cool spring are your eyes; the imprint of your little feet makes valleys of shade for me, the odour of your hair is like myrrh, and wherever you go you exhale the perfumes of the cassia tree.Love me always, love me always. You have been the supreme, the perfect love of my life; there can be no other...”

“Pray do! I think that whenever one has anything unpleasant to say, one should always be quite candid.”

“My dear fellow, I am prepared to prove anything.”

“I think it's very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person.”

“Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour.”

“You cut life to pieces with your epigrams.”

“If one listens one may be convinced; and a man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a thoroughly unreasonable person”

“The great things of life are what they seem to be, and for that reason, strange as it may sound to you, are often difficult to interpret. But the little things of life are symbols. We receive our bitter lessons most easily through them.”

“Ah! Happy they whose hearts can breakAnd peace of pardon win!How else may man make straight his pathAnd cleanse his soul from sin?How else but through a broken heartMay the Lord Christ enter in?”

“One cannot always keep an adder in one's breast to feed one, nor rise up every night to sow thorns in the garden of one's soul.”

“Le aseguro que no conozco algo más noble o más raro que una leal amistad”

“Llevamos cadenas, aunque nadie las vea, y somos esclavos, aunque los hombres nos llamen libres”

“Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime'.”

“Of course I need not remind you how fluid a thing thought is with me-- with us all-- and of what an evanescent substance are our emotions made.”

“Todos estamos en el fango, pero algunos miramos las estrellas”

“With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols of things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

“It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.”

“people who only love once in their lives are really shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or the lack of imagination. Faithlessness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the intellectual life,—simply a confession of failure.”

“It is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought.”

“They are more cunning than practical. When they make up their ledger, they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy.”

“It was a poor thing she felt for anyone to be born a foreigner.”

“I often wonder what would have happened to those in pain if, instead of Christ, there had been a Christian.”

“All charming people are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.”

“My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not, by any means, an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which men can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate.”

“One should never give a woman anything she can't wear in the evening.”

“Everybody one meets is a paradox nowadays. It is a great bore. It makes society so obvious.”

“Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.Just as vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people.And falsehoods the truths of other people.Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.”

“The world seemed to me fine because you were in it, and goodness more real because you lived.”

“You are remarkably modern, Mabel. A little too modern, perhaps. Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern. One is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly.”

“Well, she wore far too much rouge last night, and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of desperation in a woman.”

“My father told me to go to bed an hour ago. I don't see why I shouldn't give you the same advice. I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of ant use to oneself.”

“I like looking at geniuses and listening to beautiful people.”

“I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.”

“A genius in the daytime and a beauty at night!”

“Then I am sorry I did not stay away longer I like being missed.”

“He is fond of being misunderstood. It gives him a post of vantage.”

“Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.”

“I don't know that women are always rewarded for being charming. I think they are usually punished for it!”

“An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship. It starts in the right manner.”

“Sir John's temper since he has taken seriously to politics has become quite unbearable. Really, now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.”

“They actually succeed in spelling his name right in the newspapers. That in itself is fame, on the continent.”

“Oh, I love London Society! It has immensely improved. It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what Society should be.”