Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man's deeper nature is soon found out.
I have always been my own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray. Then - but I don't know how to explain it to you. Something seemed to tell me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my life. I had a strange feeling that Fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows. I grew afraid, and turned to quit the room. It was not conscience that made me do so: it was a sort of cowardice. I take no credit to myself for trying to escape.
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.
I know he likes me. Of course I flatter him dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said.
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
I can resist anything except temptation.
We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.
Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance.
The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends. [ The Soul of Man Under Socialism .]
The Americans are certainly hero-worshippers, and always take their heroes from the criminal classes.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.
I sometimes think, Harry, that there are only two eras of any importance in the world's history. The first is the appearance of a new medium for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for art also. What the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinous was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me.
Crying is for plain women. Pretty women go shopping.
I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.
The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.
America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
No good deed goes unpunished.
It is only the gods who taste of death. Apollo has passed away, but Hyacinth, whom men say he slew, lives on. Nero and Narcissus are always with us.
Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
Some subtle influence passed from him to me, and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the wonder I had always looked for, and always missed.
The only way to atone for being occasionally a little overdressed is by being always absolutely overeducated.
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
The ages live in history through their anachronisms.
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."
To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
"I was saying," continued the Rocket, "I was saying - What was I saying?" "You were talking about yourself," replied the Roman Candle. "Of course; I knew I was discussing some interesting subject when I was so rudely interrupted."
After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
Women have no appreciation of good looks; at least, good women have not.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
"I have nothing to declare except my genius."
"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance"
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.
It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But. it is better to be good than to be ugly.
It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is fatal.
A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
You can never be overdressed or overeducated.
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. ― Oscar Wilde
Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, sketch from him. Of course I have done all that. But he is much more to me than a model or a sitter. I won't tell you that I am dissatisfied with what I have done of him, or that his beauty is such that Art cannot express it. There is nothing that Art cannot express, and I know that the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best work of my life
To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.
Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
"A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies."
A good friend will always stab you in the front.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
It is not the right angle that attracts me, Nor the hard, inflexible straight line, man-made. What attracts me are free and sensual curves. The curves in my country’s mountains, In the sinuous flow of its rivers, In the beloved woman’s body.
An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.
If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
There is something tragic about the enormous number of young men there are in England at the present moment who start life with perfect profiles, and end by adopting some useful profession.
No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime. Vulgarity is the conduct of others.
You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.
Greek dress was in its essence inartistic. Nothing should reveal the body but the body.
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
Only the great masters of style ever succeeded in being obscure.
It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.
If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.
Pleasure is the only thing one should live for. Nothing ages like happiness.
Who, being loved, is poor?
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Only great masters of style can succeed in being obtuse.
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.
He has a simple and a beautiful nature...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 it possesses: my life as an artist depends on him.
I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.
Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
If one tells the truth one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
Whenever people agree with me, I always think I must be wrong.
But what is the difference between literature and journalism?/ ...Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all.
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
Now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are the most insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development.
Every woman is a rebel.
Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.
"Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same."
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
The harmony of soul and body - how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is void.
I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.
There is a fatality about all good resolutions. They are invariably made too soon.
If this was a movie, she’d be the young, ambitious teacher who shows up at the inner city school and inspires the fuckups, and suddenly everyone’s putting down their AKs and picking up their pencils, and the end credits scroll up to announce how all the kids got into Harvard or some shit. Instant Oscar for Hilary Swank.
The heart was made to be broken.
If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in solving the problem of poverty.
One should always be a little improbable.
The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.
A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.
Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. ― Oscar Wilde
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. ― Oscar Wilde
It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people’s.
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.
Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.
The condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection is youth.
You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.
I am not young enough to know everything.
"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity."
No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.
I have nothing to declare except my genius.
We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.
To define is to limit.
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered.
An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world what it is...
A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between Art and Nature.
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.
Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.
The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.
Quotes by people born this day, already used as QOTD: Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither.
Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him. He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there. He is a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that 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 pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
Dulness is the coming of age of seriousness.
But in some curious way - I wonder will you understand me?- his personality has suggested to me an entirely new manner in art, an entirely new mode of style. I see things differently, I think of them differently. I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me before. 'A dream of form in days of thought:'...Unconsciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek.
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all. -- Oscar Wilde
I sometimes think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability. -- Oscar Wilde
Why was I born with such contemporaries? -- Oscar Wilde
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry. -- Oscar Wilde
"Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community." -- Oscar Wilde
Nothing succeeds like excess. -- Oscar Wilde
Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all. -- Oscar Wilde
When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. -- Oscar Wilde
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. -- Oscar Wilde
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. -- Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist"
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason. -- Oscar Wilde
So little time, so little to do. -- Oscar Levant
Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them. -- Oscar Wilde
I always choose my friends for their good looks and my enemies for their good intellects. Man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies. -- Oscar Wilde, "The Picture of Dorian Gray"
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. -- Oscar Wilde
Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are. -- Oscar Wilde
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected. -- Oscar Wilde
Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. They worship us and are always bothering us to do something for them. -- Oscar Wilde
John Dame May Oscar</p> Was Gay Was Whitty Was Wilde But Gerard Hopkins But John Greenleaf But Thornton Was Manley Was Whittier Was Wilder -- Willard Espy
Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die. -- Oscar Wilde, "The Importance of Being Earnest"
It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produces a false impression. -- Oscar Wilde.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. -- Oscar Wilde
Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them. -- Oscar Wilde
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. -- Oscar Wilde
I knew her before she was a virgin. -- Oscar Levant, on Doris Day
It is most dangerous nowadays for a husband to pay any attention to his wife in public. It always makes people think that he beats her when they're alone. The world has grown so suspicious of anything that looks like a happy married life. -- Oscar Wilde
The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity. -- Oscar Wilde
The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream; it is a most depressing and humiliating reality. -- Oscar Wilde
Politics -- the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other. -- Oscar Ameringer
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best. -- Oscar Wilde
Women give to men the very gold of their lives. Possibly; but they invariably want it back in such very small change. -- Oscar Wilde
Only great masters of style can succeed in being obtuse. -- Oscar Wilde Most UNIX programmers are great masters of style. -- The Unnamed Usenetter
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. -- Oscar Wilde
Life is too short to be taken seriously. -- Oscar Wilde
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself. -- Oscar Wilde
Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion. -- Oscar Wilde
Alas, I am dying beyond my means. -- Oscar Wilde [as he sipped champagne on his deathbed]
The truth is rarely pure, and never simple. -- Oscar Wilde
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. -- Oscar Wilde
The English country gentleman galloping after a fox -- the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable. -- Oscar Wilde, "A Woman of No Importance"
There once was a Sailor who looked through a glass And spied a fair mermaid with scales on her... island. Where seagulls flew over their nest. She combed the long hair which hung over her... shoulders. And caused her to tickle and itch. The sailor cried out "There's a beautiful... mermaid. A sittin' out there on the rocks." The crew came a running, all grabbing their... glasses. And crowded four deep to the rail. All eager to share in this fine piece of... news. ... "Throw out a line and we'll lasso her... flippers. And soon we will certainly find If mermaids are better before or be... brave My dear fellows," The captain cried out. And cursing with spleen. This song may be dull, but it's certainly clean. -- "The Clean Song", Oscar Brandt