Oscar Wilde

“They were evidently people on a low, material plane of existence, and quite incapable of appreciating the symbolic value of sensuous phenomena.”

“He was conscious—and the thought brought a gleam of pleasure into his brown agate eyes—that it was through certain words of his, musical words said with musical utterance, that Dorian Gray's soul had turned to this white girl and bowed in worship before her. To a large extent the lad was his own creation. He had made him premature. That was something. Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed the office of art, was indeed, in its way, a real work of art, life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting.”

“No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented and rebellious, is probably a real personality, and has much in him...As for the virtuous poor...they have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very poor pottage.”

“El pecado es el único elemento colorido que queda en la vida moderna”

“El único modo de librarnos de la tentación es ceder a ella.”

“RequiescatTread lightly, she is nearUnder the snow,Speak gently, she can hearThe daisies grow.All her bright golden hairTarnished with rust,She that was young and fairFallen to dust.Lily-like, white as snow,She hardly knewShe was a woman, soSweetly she grew.Coffin-board, heavy stone,Lie on her breast,I vex my heart aloneShe is at rest.Peace, Peace, she cannot hearLyre or sonnet,All my life’s buried here,Heap earth upon it.”

“A mask tells us more than a face.”

“Il est des moments où il faut choisir entre vivre sa propre vie pleinement, entièrement, complètement, ou traîner l'existence dégradante, creuse et fausse que le monde, dans son hypocrisie, nous impose.”

“Atunci cand zeii vor sa-i pedepseasca pe oameni, le indeplinesc dorintele.”

“People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. 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. And yet—”

“For romantic young people like he is, the world always looks best at a distance; and a prison where one's allowed to order one's own dinner is not at all bad.”

“Like all good reputations... every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity.”

“Moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a feast.”

“it was never to accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience. Its aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be.”

“What does 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.”

“love is not safe”

“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;”

“Every good story-teller nowadays starts with the end, andthen goes on to the beginning, and concludes with themiddle...”

“A flower blossoms for its own joy.”

“The sunlight slipped over the polished leaves.”

“Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a mauvais quart d'heure made up of exquisite moments”

“La insinceridad es un método con que multiplicar nuestras personalidades”

“La experiencia no tiene ningún valor ético. Es simplemente el nombre que los hombres dan a sus errores”

“Influir en una persona supone darle nuestra alma”

“El único camino para deshacerse de la tentación es ceder a ella”

“Existen venenos tan sutiles que para conocer sus propiedades hay que probarlos. Existen enfermedades tan extrañas que uno tiene que sufrirlas para comprender su esencia”

“El único error imperdonable en el que incurren todas las personas verdaderamente buenas y que nunca pueden evitar es conversar de forma sincera”

“El cigarro es un ejemplo perfecto de un placer perfecto. Es exquisito y deja a uno insatisfecho”

“Él nunca se lo perdonó. Es una costumbre que tienen los aburridos”

“Detrás de toda hermosura hay algo trágico”

“Definir es limitar”

“Cuando quiero a alguien de verdad, no me gusta decir su nombre a nadie. Es como ceder una parte de él.”

“Cuando uno está enamorado, siempre comienza engañándose a sí mismo y termina engañando a otros. Eso es lo que el mundo llama amor”

“Cuando somos felices siempre somos buenos, pero cuando somos buenos no siempre somos felices”

“Cuando nos confesamos de algo, pensamos que nadie más tiene derecho a culparnos. Es la confesión, no el sacerdote, lo que nos absuelve”

“Creo que el arte oculta al artista más que lo descubre”

“Conciencia y cobardía son lo mismo realmente, Basil. La conciencia es el nombre comercial de la empresa. Eso es todo”

“Cada impresión producida crea un enemigo. Para ser popular hay que ser una mediocridad”

“A un niño con quemaduras le gusta el fuego”

“Amar es superarse”

“A ti te gusta todo el mundo, o lo que es lo mismo, no te importa nadie”

“Il y a beaucoup de choses que l’on jetterait volontiers si l’on ne craignait que d’autres ne les ramassent”

“Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.”

“The only real people are the people who never existed, and if a novelist is base enough to go to life for his personages he should at least pretend that they are creations, and not boast of them as copies. The justification of a character in a novel is not that other persons are what they are, but that the author is what he is. Otherwise the novel is not a work of art.”

“There is such a thing as robbing a story of its reality by trying to make it too true...”

“The artistic life is a long, lovely suicide.”

“Besides, every experience is of value, and whatever one may say against marriage, it is certainly an experience.”

“Don't spoil him. Don't try to influence him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide and has many marvellous people in it. Don't take away from me the one person who gives to my art whatever charm that possesses: my life as an artist depends on him.”

“On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.”

“But he suddenly started up, and closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake.”