Oscar Wilde

“Yes Harry I believe that is true. I cannot help telling you things. You have a curious influence over me. If I ever did a crime I would come and confess it to you. You would understand me.”

“The rich would have spoken on the value of thrift and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour.”

“Oh I can't explain. When I like people immensely I never tell their names to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.”

“I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished.”

“God and other artists are always a little obscure.....”

“I am dying beyond my means”

“I believe that you are really a very good husband but that you are thoroughly ashamed of your own virtues. You are an extraordinary fellow. You never say a moral thing and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose.”

“My dear fellow why have you any reason? What odd chaps you painters are. You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

“Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known”

“No theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself”

“I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else.”

“My Salome is a mystic the sister of Salammbô a Saint Thérèse who worships the moon.”

“We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.All art is quite useless.”

“I'm really very sorry, but it is not my fault. People are so annoying. All my pianists look exactly like poets, and all my poets look exactly like pianists”

“Not "Forgive us for our sins" but "Smite us for our iniquities" should be the prayer of man to a most just God.”

“those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin.”

“The people who have adored me-- there have not been very many, but there have been some-- have always insisted on living on, long after I had ceased to care for them, or they to care for me.”

“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”

“No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly”

“There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other - by language, which is the parent, and not the child, of thought.”

“Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.”

“The trouble with women is, that when they grow up, they turn into their mothers. The trouble with men is, that they don’t.”

“Looking good and dressing well is a necessity. Having a purpose in life is not.”

“Man is complete in himself. When they go into the world, the world will disagree with them. That is inevitable. The world hates Individualism. But that is not to trouble them. They are to be calm and self-centred. If a man takes their cloak, they are to give him their coat, just to show that material things are of no importance. If people abuse them, they are not to answer back. What does it signify? The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realise through that sin his true perfection.”

“Kad smo srećni, uvek smo dobri; ali, kada samo dobri, nismo uvek srećni.”

“A única diferença entre um capricho e uma paixão eterna é que o capricho dura um pouco mais.”

“But I loved Narcissus because as he lay on my banks and looked down at me, in the mirror of his eyes I saw ever my own beauty mirrored.”

“I suddenly became conscious that some one was looking at me. I turned half-way round and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.”

“I can sympathise with everything, except suffering", cried Lord Harry, Shrugging his shoulders. "I cannot sympathise with that. It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain.”

“How dreadful!" cried Lord Harry. "I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.”

“There is no such thing as good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral- immoral from a scientific point of view.”

“Every impulse we strangle will only poison us.”

“It is better to repent a sin than regret the loss of a pleasure.”

“Svi smo mi u blatu, ali neki od nas gledaju ka zvezdama.”

“Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age.”

“Saber seria fatal. Na incerteza é que está o encanto. O nevoeiro dá às coisas aspectos maravilhosos.Mas a gente pode errar o caminho.Todos os caminhos vão dar ao mesmo ponto.Qual é?A desilusão.Foi a minha estreia na vida.(...) O botão do seu florete, você o deixou cair.Resta-me a máscara.Que lhe dá mais beleza aos olhos.”

“Possivelmente nunca parecemos tão à vontade como quando temos de representar um papel.”

“Afinal, será a insinceridade algo tão terrível? Não me parece. É apenas um método pelo qual podemos multiplicar nossa personalidade.”

“Civilizar-se não é fácil. Só se consegue por dois meios: cultivando-se, ou pervertendo-se.”

“os livros que o mundo tacha de imorais são os que mostram ao mundo a sua imoralidade”

“Sometimes, the unnecessary is necessary.”

“I don't think there is a woman in the world who would not be a little flattered if one made love to her. It is that which makes women so irresistibly adorable.”

“The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.”

“It is very vulgar to talk about one's business.”

“But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play— I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend.”

“I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much”

“Devant une facade rose, Sur le marbre d'un escalier.”

“Oh, don't cough, Ernest. When one is dictating one should speak fluently and not cough. Besides, I don't know how to spell a cough.”

“Yes,’ he cried, ‘you have killed my love! You used to stir my imagination. Now you don’t even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvelous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid. My God! how mad I was to love you! What a fool I have been! You are nothing to me now. I will never see you again. I will never think of you. I will never mention your name. You can’t know what you were to me, once. Why, once… Oh, I can’t bear to think of it! I wish I had never laid eyes upon you! You have spoiled the romance of my life. How little you can know of love if you say it mars your art! Without your art you are nothing. I would have made you famous, splendid, magnificent. The world would have worshiped you, and you would have borne my name. What are you now? A third-rate actress with a pretty face.”

“Come, I tell you. You have chattered enough about corruption. Now you shall look on it face to face!”