Quotes by "Oscar Wilde"

Women have no appreciation of good looks-at least, good women have not.

The public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities.... A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions--one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true.

Nichts Interessantes ist jemals richtig.

Я верю в величие нации. — Оно только пережиток предприимчивости и напористости. — В нём залог развития. — Упадок мне милее. — А как же искусство? — Оно — болезнь. — А любовь? — Иллюзия. — А религия? — Распространённый суррогат веры. — Вы скептик. — Ничуть! Ведь скептицизм — начало веры. — Да кто же вы? — Определить — значит ограничить. — Ну дайте мне хоть нить!.. — Нити обрываются. И вы рискуете заблудиться в лабиринте

Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.

But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.

In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.

Die Welt ist von Narren geschaffen, damit Weise in ihr Leben.

She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.

Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

You are more to me than any of them has any idea; you are the atmosphere of beauty through which I see life; you are the incarnation of all lovely things...I think of you day and night. ~ Letter to Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas

Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.

I had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel.

He is fairer than the morning star, and whiter than the moon. For his body I would give my soul, and for his love I would surrender heaven.

The curves of your lips rewrite history.

There are two ways to dislike poetry: One is to dislike it; the other is to read Pope.

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