Oscar Wilde

“I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words”

“Look at the moon. How strange the moon seems! She is like a woman rising from a tomb. She is like a dead woman. One might fancy she was looking for dead things.”

“Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.”

“Perhaps one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part.”

“There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses.”

“Perhaps in nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its place.”

“Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain ethical efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy.”

“Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight rope. When the verities become acrobats, we can judge them.”

“Everyone is born a king; some people die in exile”

“I put all my talent into my works; I put my genius into my life”

“In the square below,’ said the Happy Prince, ‘there stands a little match-girl. She has let her matches fall in the gutter, and they are all spoiled. Her father will beat her if she does not bring home some money, and she is crying. She has no shoes or stockings, and her little head is bare. Pluck out my other eye, and give it to her, and her father will not beat her.’‘I will stay with you one night longer,’ said the Swallow, ‘but I cannot pluck out your eye. You would be quite blind then.’‘Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,’ said the Prince, ‘do as I command you.’So he plucked out the Prince’s other eye, and darted down with it. He swooped past the match-girl, and slipped the jewel into the palm of her hand. ‘What a lovely bit of glass,’ cried the little girl; and she ran home, laughing.Then the Swallow came back to the Prince. ‘You are blind now,’ he said, ‘so I will stay with you always.”

“It is so beautiful that I am sure it has a long Latin name.”

“Le cose vere della vita non si imparano nè si studiano. Ma si incontrano”

“Estoy harto de la inteligencia. Todo el mundo es inteligente en la actualidad. No se puede ir a ningún lado sin conocer a gente inteligente. La cosa se ​​ha convertido en una verdadera calamidad pública. Desearía por sobre todas las cosas que aún nos quedaran algunos tontos.”

“And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.”

“When a golden girl can winPrayer from out the lips of sin,When the barren almond bears,And a little child gives away its tears,Then shall all the house be stillAnd peace come to Canterville.”

“You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.”

“It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.”

“Mas uma tonalidade de cor diferente, casual, num aposento, no céu de certa manhã, um perfume especial de que você tanto gostou, porventura, e que evoca lembranças sutis, um verso de um poema esquecido, com que você depara novamente,a cadência de uma peça musical que você já não mais tocava...Eu digo, Dorian, é de coisas como essas que nossas vidas dependem.”

“A tragédia da velhice não é a existência do velho, mas, sim, a existência do jovem.”

“Podemos ter, na vida, no máximo, uma grande experiência, e o segredo da vida está em repeti-la com a maior frequência possível.A Duquesa fez uma pausa.- Mesmo quando essa experiência nos fere, Harry?-Especialmente quando nos fere.”

“Alma e corpo, corpo e alma, como eram misteriosos! Havia animalismo na alma, e o corpo possuía momentos de espiritualidade.”

“Não importava como tudo terminaria ou como estaria fadado a terminar. Dorian era uma dessas figuras graciosas, num préstito, numa peça, cujas alegrias nos parecem remotas, mas cujas tristezas nos estremecem o sentido de beleza, e cujas feridas parecem rosas verdadeiras.”

“As pessoas comuns costumavam esperar para que a vida lhes exibisse os próprios segredos; para a minoria, porém, para os eleitos, os mistérios da vida eram revelados antes mesmo que o véu fosse afastado, efeito, muitas vezes, da arte, especialmente da literatura, que lida, direto, com as paixões e o intelecto.”

“Existem muitas coisas que jogaríamos fora, não receássemos que outros mais pudessem pegá-las.”

“Há algo de muito mórbido na condescendência moderna para com a dor.”

“Se o candidato for um cavalheiro, saberá o suficiente, e se não for um cavalheiro, por mais que saiba de nada lhe valerá.”

“Fico a pensar quem foi que definiu o homem como um animal racional! Foi a definição mais prematura que já ouvi. O homem é muitas coisas, mas não é racional.”

“Eu adoro prazeres triviais. São o último refúgio do complexo.”

“Em se viver um romance, é que deixamos de ser românticos.”

“É o espectador, e não a vida, que a arte, na verdade, espelha.”

“Die gewöhnlichste Begebenheit wird reich an Schönheit, wenn man sie verheimlicht.”

“For Man's grim Justice goes its way, And will not swerve aside: It slays the weak, it slays the strong, It has a deadly stride: With iron heel it slays the strong, The monstrous parricide!”

“But Venice, like Oxford, had kept the background for romance, and, to the true romantic, background was everything, or almost everything.”

“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 realize through that sin his true perfection.”

“It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would destroy it.”

“Youth is the only thing worth having.”

“Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses.”

“I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.”

“A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.”

“It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.”

“They've promised that dreams can come true - but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too.”

“Those whom the gods love grow young.”

“Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.”

“We all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man - that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.”

“The secret to life is to enjoy the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.”

“It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way.”

“The post on her left was occupied by Mr. Erskine of Treadley, an old gentleman of considerable charm and culture, who had fallen, however, into bad habits of silence, having, as he explained once to Lady Agatha, said everything that he had to say before he was thirty.”

“Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything.Yes, murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-hole in his coat; and when they grow older they know it.”

“Why can't these American women stay in their own country? They are always telling us that it is the paradise for women.''It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it.”