Oscar Wilde

“A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.”

“He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize”

“Man can believe the impossible, but can never believe the improbable”

“I drink to separate my body from my soul.”

“I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.”

“When I say that I am convinced of these things I speak with too much pride. Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the city of God. It is so wonderful that it seems as if a child could reach it in a summer's day. And so a child could. But with me and such as me it is different. One can realise a thing in a single moment, but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet. It is so difficult to keep 'heights that the soul is competent to gain.' We think in eternity, but we move slowly through time; and how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I need not tell again, nor of the weariness and despair that creep back into one's cell, and into the cell of one's heart, with such strange insistence that one has, as it were, to garnish and sweep one's house for their coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter master, or a slave whose slave it is one's chance or choice to be.”

“One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.”

“Conscience makes egotists of us all.”

“By the way, is there any difference between 'grey' and 'gray'? I believe there is, but I don't know what it is. In one place in the poem Smithers suggests 'gray'. In others he leaves 'grey'. Perhaps he is seeing red. I believe they are sympathetic colours in spectroscope investigations.”

“The public is largely influenced by the look of a book. So are we all. It is the only artistic thing about the public.”

“The weather is entrancing, but in my heart there is no sun.”

“The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.”

“Si no podéis disfrutar leyendo un libro repetidas veces, de nada sirve leerlo ni una sola vez.”

“I am getting rather astonishing in my Italian conversation. I believe I talk a mixture of Dante and the worst modern slang.”

“He loves first editions, especially of women: little girls are his passion.”

“I see that any materialism in life coarsens the soul, and that the hunger of the body and the appetites of the flesh desecrate always, and often destroy.”

“I have also learnt sympathy with suffering. To me, suffering seems now a sacramental thing, that makes those whom it touches holy.”

“My desire to live is as intense as ever, and though my heart is broken, hearts are made to be broken: that is why God sends sorrow into the world.”

“I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.”

“I am covered with fine gold," said the Prince, "you must take it off, leaf by leaf, and give it to my poor.”

“Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then, and then only, does it comes into existence.”

“I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.”

“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is by far the best ending for one.”

“I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.”

“I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar and often convincing.”

“The weather still continues charming.”

“We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.”

“If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.”

“But what world says that [I'm wicked]? It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent terms.”

“She knew nothing but she had everything he had lost.”

“The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought and sold and bartered away.”

“There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live, undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet.”

“My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.”

“The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.”

“Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly -- that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to oneself. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion -- these are the two things that govern us.”

“When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.”

“Ah! The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, women...merely adored.”

“I love to talk about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about.”

“A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.”

“For life is terribly deficient in form. Its catastrophes happen in the wrong way and to the wrong people. There is a grotesque horror about its comedies, and its tragedies seem to culminate in farce.”

“For a year after that was done to me I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time. That is not such a tragic thing as possibly it sounds to you. To those who are in prison tears are a part of every day's experience. A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not a day on which one's heart is happy.”

“Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.”

“It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco.It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world.”

“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.”

“He is some brainless, beautiful creature, who should always be here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in the summer when we want something to chill our intelligence.”

“The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial.”

“Each of us has heaven and hell in him...”

“Chaque fois qu'on produit un effet, on se donne un ennemi. Il faut rester médiocre pour être populaire.”

“When good Americans die, they go to Paris'.'Where do bad Americans go?''They stay in America'.”

“One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.”