Oscar Wilde

“There is no good talking to him," said a Dragon-fly, who was sitting on the top of a large brown bulrush; "no good at all, for he has gone away.""Well, that is his loss, not mine," answered the Rocket. "I am not going to stop talking to him merely because he pays no attention. I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.""Then you should definitely lecture on Philosophy," said the Dragon-fly.”

“Any place you love is the world to you.”

“She has form," he said to himself, as he walked away through the grove - "that cannot be denied to her; but has she got feeling? I am afraid not. In fact, she is like most artists; she is all style, without any sincerity. She would not sacrifice herself for others. She thinks merely of music, and everybody knows that arts are selfish. Still, it must be admitted that she has some beautiful notes in her voice. What a pity it is that they do not mean anything, or do any practical good.”

“Surely Love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the marketplace. It may not be purchased of the merchants, for can it be weighed out in the balance for gold.”

“Girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don't think it right.”

“Sins of the flesh are nothing. They are maladies for physicians to cure, if they should be cured. Sins of the soul alone are shameful.”

“What you really are is a Bunburyist. I was quite right in saying you were a Bunburyist. You are one of the most advanced Bunburyists I know.”

“All good looks are a snare. They are a snare that every sensible man would like to be caught in.”

“The simplicity of your character makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me.”

“I can not help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates. Art is always more abstract than we fancy. Form and color tell us of form and color-that is all. It often seems to me that art conceals the artist more completely than it ever reveals hi m”

“Adevarul despre casatorie este acela ca te face sa nu mai fi egoist. Iar oamenii lipsiti de egoism sun incolori. Le lipseste individualitatea”

“Doar doua categorii de oameni sunt de-a dreptul fascinanti: cei care stiu totul si cei care nu stiu nimic”

“A fi bun inseamna a fi in armonie cu tine insuti. Disonanta inseamna a fi in armonie cu altii”

“Placerea este testul naturii, semnul ei aprobator”

“Nicio viata nu e stricata cu exceptia celei care este oprita. Daca vrei sa strici caracterul cuiva nu trebuie decat sa il reformezi”

“Nicioadata nu aprob sau dezaprob un lucru, e o atitudine absurda fata de viata. Nu suntem trimisi in lume ca sa ne exibitionam prejudecatile morale" - Dorian Gray”

“Motivul pentru care ne place sa ii apreciem pe altii este ca ne e teama de noi insine. La baza optimismului se afla teroarea. Credem ca suntem generosi pentru ca il creditam pe aproapele nostru, care ne vor fi noua benefice" - Dorian Gray”

“If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life but what I will call the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward.”

“Dorian Gray frowned and turned his head away. He could not help liking the tall, graceful young man who was standing by him. His romantic, olive-coloured face and worn expression interested him. There was something in his low languid voice that was absolutely fascinating. His cool, white, flowerlike hands, even, had a curious charm. They moved, as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language of their own. But he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid.”

“Yes, very sensible... People die of common sense, Dorian, one lost moment at a time. Life is a moment. There is no hereafter. So make it burn always with the hardest flame.”

“Beauty is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight,or springtime, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you...Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed...Ah! realise your youth while you have it. Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar...Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing...The world belongs to you for a season...how tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is such a little time that your youth will last. The common hillflowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to...Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth.”

“Behind Joy and Laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind Sorrow there is always Sorrow. Pain, unlike Pleasure, wears no mask.”

“I am quite incapable of understanding how any work of art can be criticized from a moral standpoint. The sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate.”

“I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.”

“There were opium-dens, where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new.”

“You should treat the trivial things in life seriously and the serious things in life with a sincere and studied triviality”

“The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination,made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain,danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks.”

“People die of common sense”

“With an evening coat and a white tie, as you told me once, anybody, even a stock-broker, can gain a reputation for being civilized. Well, after I had been in the room about ten minutes, talking to huge overdressed dowagers and tedious academicians, I suddenly became conscious that some one was looking at me.”

“And so he would now study perfumes, and the secrets of their manufacture, distilling heavily-scented oils, and burning odorous gums from the East. He saw that there was no mood of the mind that had not its counterpart in the sensuous life, and set himself to discover their true relations, wondering what there was in frankincense that made one mystical, and in ambergris that stirred one’s passions, and in violets that woke the memory of dead romances, and in musk that troubled the brain, and in champak that stained the imagination; and seeking often to elaborate a real psychology of perfumes, and to estimate the several influences of sweet-smelling roots, and scented pollen-laden flower, of aromatic balms, and of dark and fragrant woods, of spikenard that sickens, of hovenia that makes men mad, and of aloes that are said to be able to expel melancholy from the soul.”

“The world is made by the singer for the dreamer.”

“Chyba prawie każdy z nas czuwał kiedyś przed wschodem słońca, już to po jednej zowych bezsennych nocy, przyprawiającej nas niemal o zakochanie się w śmierci, już to pojednej z owych nocy lęku i szpetnych uciech, gdy przez komórki mózgu przeciągająmajaki, potworniejsze jeszcze od rzeczywistości, a ożywione tym intensywnym życiemutajonym we wszelkiej groteskowości, które nadaje również gotykowi trwałą siłę życiową,gdyż sztuka ta wydaje się przede wszystkim sztuką tych, których dusze zasępia chorobamarzenia. Z wolna białe palce wsuwają się przez firanki i zdają się drżeć. Niby czarne,fantastyczne postacie - nieme cienie pełzają po kątach pokoju i tam się układają. Nadworze słychać szelest ptaków w listowiu lub kroki ludzi idących do roboty albo jęki iwestchnienia wiatru, który zlatuje ze wzgórza i okrąża cichy dom, jakby się bał zbudzićśpiącego, a jednak musiał odwołać sen z jego fioletowej jaskini. Zasłona po zasłonie zcienkiej przejrzystej gazy z wolna się podnosi, rzeczy odzyskują kształty i barwy iwidzimy, jak nadchodzący dzień oddaje światu dawne jego oblicze. Blade zwierciadłaznów otrzymują swe życie odtwórcze. Wygasłe świece stoją, gdzie je pozostawiliśmy, aobok nich leży na wpół rozcięta książka, którą czytaliśmy, lub drutem opleciony kwiat,który nosiliśmy na balu, albo list, który obawialiśmy się przeczytać lub czytaliśmy zbytczęsto. Wszystko wydaje się nie zmienione. Ze złudnych cieni nocy wyłania sięprawdziwe, znane nam życie. Musimy je podjąć, gdzie zostało przerwane, i ogarnia nasuczucie straszne - uczucie konieczności zmuszającej do ciągłego zużywania sił w nużącymkole codziennych wydarzeń lub też porywa nas dzika tęsknota, by pewnego poranka oczynasze otworzyły się na świat, co w mroku na nowo został stworzony ku naszej radości, naświat, w którym rzeczy mają barwy i kształty nowe albo zmienione lub też kryją w sobienowe tajemnice; na świat, w którym przeszłość nie zajmowałaby wcale miejsce albobardzo mało, a w każdym razie nie w świadomej formie powinności czy skruchy, bonawet wspomnienie radości posiada swą gorycz jak wspomnienie rozkoszy - swój ból.”

“Szary, olbrzymi Londyn ze swoimi miriadami ludzi, brudnych grzeszników i wspaniałych grzechów.”

“Lord Henryk nie wrócił jeszcze do domu. Z zasady się spóźniał, twierdząc, że punktualność jest złodziejem czasu.”

“Ile hałasu ludzie robią z powodu wierności. Nawet w miłości jest ona problemem czysto fizjologicznym. Z wolą nasza nie ma nic wspólnego. Młodzi ludzie chcieliby być wierni, ale nie są, starzy chcieliby byc niewierni, a nie mogą. Nic więcej na ten temat nie da się powiedzieć.”

“No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime”.”

“For the future let those who come to play with me have no hearts,' she cried, and she ran out into the garden.”

“Exploded! Was he the victim of a revolutionary outrage? I was not aware that Mr. Bunbury was interested in social legislation. If so, he is well punished for his morbidity.”

“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. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful.”

“Friendship...is not something you learn in school,but if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship you really haven't learned anything.”

“It was an ill-omened place. Death walked there in the sunlight.”

“And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, 'You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.”

“There was a silence. The evening darkened in the room. Noiselessly and with silver feet the shadows crept in from the garden. The colours faded wearily out of things.”

“Women have no appreciation of good looks—at least, good women have not.”

“I didn't say I liked it Harry. I said it fascinated me. There is a great difference.”

“You have not realized how I have developed. I was a schoolboy when you knew me. I am a man now. I have new passions new thoughts new ideas. I am different but you must not like me less. I am changed but you must always be my friend.”

“Guarire lo spirito per mezzo dei sensi, e i sensi per mezzo dello spirito: questo è il segreto.”

“The separation of spirit from matter was a mystery and the union of spirit with matter was a mystery also.”

“Basil my dear boy puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his prejudices his principles and his common sense. 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.”

“Lord Henry smiled. People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.”