Oscar Wilde

“Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.”

“He covered page after page with wild words of sorrow and wilder words of pain. There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.”

“Conformity is the last refuge of the unimaginitive”

“Where there is no love there is no understanding.”

“If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you.”

“The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.”

“Art is rarely intelligible to the criminal classes.”

“Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.”

“Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.”

“Jack: Actually, I was found. Lady Bracknell: Found? Jack: Uh, yes, I was in... a handbag. Lady Bracknell: A handbag? Jack: Yes, it was... [makes gestures] Jack: an ordinary handbag.”

“It's the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.”

“When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.”

“Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be invited to cocktail parties.”

“A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of 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 make a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.”

“The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously-and have somebody find out.”

“Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.”

“It is better to be beautiful then to be good, but it is better to be good then to be ugly.”

“We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.”

“Grass is hard and lumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects.”

“nothing that is worth knowing can be taught”

“And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,The hand that held the steel:For only blood can wipe out blood,And only tears can heal”

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

“With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?”

“Oscar Wilde was suing the Marquis of Queensbury in 1895 for libel accusing Wilde of homosexualityCounsel: Have you ever adored a young man madly?Wilde: I have never given adoration to anyone except myself.”

“When he takes the knife to the canvass the servants find him lying dead with a knife through is heart and "withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage." and the portrait "in all the wonders of his exquisite youth and beauty." p 349”

“Out of the unreal shadows of night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off... p 207”

“His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion.”

“I really don't see what is so romantic about proposing. One may be accepted - one usually is, I believe - and then the excitement is ended. The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”

“Oh, I don’t care about Jack. I don’t care for anybody in the whole world but you. I love you, Cecily. You will marry me, won’t you?You silly boy! Of course. Why, we have been engaged for the last three months.For the last three months?”

“She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.”

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.”

“Everything popular is wrong.”

“To be popular one must be a mediocrity.”

“One should always be in love. That's the reason one should never marry.”

“To shut one's eyes to half of life that one may live securely is as though one blinded oneself that one might walk with more safety in a land of pit and precipice.”

“Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. . .”

“The proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding.”

“Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.”

“The world is a stage and the play is badly cast.”

“What art seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.”

“By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”

“All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.”

“When the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.”

“Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered.”

“It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don't mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind. -Algernon”

“I don’t say we all ought to misbehave. But we ought to look as if we could”

“No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.”

“The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.”

“ya, aku memang seorang pemimpi. karena pemimpi adalah orang yang dapat menemukan jalannya dengan diterangi cahaya bulan, dan orang pertama yang melihat matahari terbit sebelum seluruh dunia melihatnya.”

“I analyzed you, though you did not adore me.”