Oscar Wilde

“From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.”

“Yet, as has been said of him before, no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself. He felt keenly conscious of how barren all intellectual speculation is when separated from action and experiment. He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have their spiritual mysteries to reveal.”

“As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”

“The is nothing that art cannot express”

“Women try their luck; men risk theirs.”

“Hello, I am Oscar Wilde”

“The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish. And unselfish people are colourless. They lack individuality.”

“Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.”

“In literature mere egotism is delightful.”

“In the strangely simple economy of the world people only get what they give, and to those who have not enough imagination to penetrate the mere outward of things and feel pity, what pity can be given save that of scorn?”

“And Sleep will not lie down, but walksWild-eyed and cries to Time.”

“Let me be surrounded by luxury, I can do without the necessities!”

“It is said that passion makes one think in a circle.”

“To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomat - the problem is entirely the same in both cases. To know how much oil to mix in with one's vinegar.”

“The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action.”

“All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is a crime”

“you seem to be displaying signs of triviality.”

“I am not in favour of this modern mania for turning bad people into good people at a moment's notice.”

“A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life.”

“Amare se stessi è l'inizio di una storia d'amore lunga tutta una vita.”

“And when wind and winter hardenAll the loveless land,It will whisper of the garden,You will understand.”

“Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.”

“The long black nights, when the moon hides her face, when the stars are afraid, are not so black. The silence that dwells in the forest is not so black. There is nothing in the world so black as thy hair.”

“Well, eighteen, then. And I saw you with him the other night at the opera." She laughed nervously as she spoke, and watched him with her vague forget-me-not eyes. She was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions. She tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy. Her name was Victoria, and she had a perfect mania for going to church.”

“Jack: “Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me?”Gwendolen: “I can. For I feel that you are sure to change.”

“Lady Bracknell: “He was eccentric, I admit. But only in later years. And that was the result of the Indian climate, and marriage, and indigestion, and other things of that kind.”

“Jack: “Gwendolen, wait here for me.”Gwendolen: “If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.”

“Jack: [Slowly and hesitatingly] “Gwendolen–Cecily–it is very painful for me to be forced to speak the truth. It is the first time in my life that I have ever been reduced to such a painful position, and I am really quite inexperienced in doing anything of the kind.”

“Cecily: “Miss Prism says that all good looks are a snare”Algernon: “They are a snare that every sensible man would like to be caught in.”Cecily: “Oh, I don’t think I would care to catch a sensible man. I shouldn’t know what to talk to him about.”

“What is done is done. What is past is past.""You call yesterday the past?""What has the actual lapse of time got to do with it? It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”

“She lives the poetry she cannot write.”

“I don’t think that you should tell me that you love me wildly, passionately, devotedly, hopelessly.  Hopelessly doesn’t seem to make much sense, does it?”

“Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written.”

“Pentru a-ți recâștiga tinerețea trebuie doar să-ți repeți nebuniile.”

“Sincerity is the last refuge of the shallow.”

“The worst vice of a fanatic is his sincerity.”

“The basis of every scandal is immoral certainty.”

“The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plentitude.”

“Ah! I have talked quite enough for today," said Lord Henry, smiling. "All I want now is to look at life. You may come and look at it with me, if you care to.”

“Like all people who try to exhaust a subject, he exhausted his listeners.”

“Dorian Gray listened, open-eyed and wondering. The spray of lilac fell from his hand upon the gravel. A furry bee came and buzzed round it for a moment. Then it began to scramble all over the oval stellated globe of the tiny blossoms. He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression, or when some though that terrifies us lays sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield.”

“A vida não se governa pela vontade ou pelas intenções. É uma questão de nervos, de fibras, de células lentamente elaboradas, onde se oculta o pensamento e onde as paixões têm seus sonhos. Tu podes te acreditar salvo e forte; mas um tom de cor entrevisto no aposento, um céu matinal, um certo perfume que amaste e te desperta sutis recordações, um verso de um poema esquecido que te volta à memória, uma frase musical que não tocas mais, é de tudo isto, Dorian, asseguro-te, que depende a nossa existência.”

“Details are always vulgar”

“Nature....she will hang the night stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send word the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.”

“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 someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.”

“I would give my soul for that!”

“The more he knew, the more he desired to know. He had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them.”

“One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book.”

“I understand what you mean, and I believe in this girl. Anyone you love must be marvellous, and any girl that has the effect you describe must be fine and noble. To spiritualise one's age--that is something worth doing. If this girl can give a soul to those who have lived without one, if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been sordid and ugly, if she can strip them of their selfishness and lend them tears for sorrows that are not their own, she is worthy of all your adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world.”

“Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obscure.”