Oscar Wilde

“The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbour with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets.”

“Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.”

“My dear Arthur, I never talk scandal. I only talk gossip.What is the difference between scandal and gossip?Oh! Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”

“Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everybody in good society holds exactly the same opinions.”

“Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.”

“Because sometimes you have to do something bad to do something good.”

“The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.”

“To be popular one must be a mediocrity.""Not with Women," said the duchess, shaking her head; "and women rule the world. I assure you we can't bear mediocrities. We women, as someone says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all.""It seems to me that we never do anything else," murmered Dorian.”

“He would never again tempt innocence. He would be good.”

“Have you not sometimes noted,When we unlock some long-disuséd roomWith heavy dust and soiling mildew filled,Where never foot of man has come for years,And from the windows take the rusty bar,And fling the broken shutters to the air,And let the bright sun in, how the good sunTurns every grimy particle of dustInto a little thing of dancing gold?Guido, my heart is that long-empty room,But you have let love in, and with its goldGilded all life.”

“What nonsense people talk about happy marriages!" exclaimed Lord Henry. " A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.”

“You told me you had destroyed it." "I was wrong. It has destroyed me.”

“Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh new school, a school that is to have in it all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek. The harmony of soul and body - how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is void. Harry! If only you knew what Dorian Gray is to me!”

“Poor? What does that matter? When poverty creeps in at the door, love flies in through the window.”

“Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of physical weakness in the old.”

“ever since I met you I have admired you more than any girl...I have ever met since...I met you.”

“When they make up their ledger, they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy.”

“La tragedia de la vejez no consiste en ser viejo, sino en haber sido joven.”

“Cada vez que se ama es la única vez que se ha amado nunca.”

“No hay más que dos clases de personas verdaderamente fascinadoras: las que lo saben absolutamente todo y las que no saben absolutamente nada.”

“Hay muchas cosas que abandonaríamos si no temiéramos que otros pudiesen recogerlas.”

“¡Qué triste es! -murmuraba Dorian con los ojos fijos todavía en su retrato-. ¡Qué triste! Me volveré viejo, horrible, espantoso. Pero ese retrato permanecerá siempre joven. No será nunca más viejo que en este día de junio... ¡Si ocurriera al contrario, si fuera yo siempre joven, y si este retrato envejeciese! ¡Por eso, por eso lo daría yo todo! ¡Sí, no hay nada en el mundo que no diera yo! ¡Por ello daría hasta mi alma!”

“La única diferencia que hay entre un capricho y una pasión eterna es que el capricho dura un poco más de tiempo.”

“Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.”

“You have never been poor, and never known what ambition is.”

“If we're always guided by other people's thoughts, what's the point in having our own?”

“Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks.”

“Comprendí que estaba ante alguien cuya simple personalidad era tan fascinante que, si me abandonaba a ella, absorbería mi naturaleza entera, mi alma y hasta mi propio arte.”

“Sólo hay en el mundo una cosa peor que el que hablen de uno, y es que no hablen.”

“You have always told me it was Ernest. I have introduced you to every one as Ernest. You answer to the name of Ernest. You look as if your name was Ernest. You are the most earnest-looking person I ever saw in my life. It is perfectly absurd your saying that your name isn't Ernest.”

“Have some bread and butter. The breadand butter is for Gwendolen. Gwendolen is devoted to bread andbutter.”

“Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the priviledge of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor shall be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.”

“It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free.”

“In her dealings with man, destiny never closed her accounts.”

“Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with man, Destiny never closed her accounts.”

“To him, man was a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead.”

“It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.”

“It is simply expression, as Henry says, that gives reality to things.”

“Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul?”

“So much had been surrendered! And to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape (...)”

“Puedo resistirlo todo, excepto la tentación.”

“What a silly thing love is!' said the student as he walked away. 'It is not half as useful as logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always telling one of things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true. In fact, it is quite unpractical, and, as in this age to be practical is everything, I shall go back to philosophy and study metaphysics.' So he returned to his room and pulled out a great dusty book, and began to read.”

“When asked what he thought of sports, Oscar Wilde replied, "I approve of any activity that requires the wearing of special clothing.”

“Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing worth having." "I don't feel that, Lord Henry." "No, you don't feel it now. Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world.”

“Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood”

“I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.”

“The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid”

“Looking around his hotel room not long before expiring: "This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has to go.”

“We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.”

“The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.”