Quotes from Oscar Wilde

My dear fellow, the way you flirt with Gwendolen is perfectly disgraceful. It is almost as disgraceful as the way Gwendolen flirts with you.

She doesn't care much for eloquence in others.  She thinks it a little loud. [

It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain.

No, as far as I am concerned, let your wife cherish the memory of this dead, stainless mother.  Why should I interfere with her illusions? 

the serious study of the great aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing.

But this murder--was it to dog him all his life? Was he always to be burdened by his past? Was he really

En lugar de «perdónanos nuestros pecados», la plegaria de los hombres a un Dios de justicia debería ser «castíganos por nuestras iniquidades».

That's always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people would want to be around someone because they're pretty. It's like picking your breakfast cereals based on color instead of taste.

Ideals are dangerous things.  Realities are better.  They wound

To become the spectator of one's own life, as Harry says, is to escape the suffering of life. I

Your cynicism is simply a pose.

I love talking about nothing, father.  It is the only thing I know anything about. lord

Hallward. Had he gone to his aunt's, he would have

Psychology is in its infancy, as a science. I hope, in the interests of Art, it will always remain so.

No existen libros morales o inmorales. Los libros están bien o mal escritos. Eso es todo.

And Sleep will not lie down, but walks Wild-eyed and cries to Time.

La humanidad se toma a sí misma demasiado en serio. Es el pecado original del mundo. Si el hombre de las cavernas hubiera sabido reír, la historia habría sido diferente.

La verdad es una cosa muy dolorosa de oír y de manifestar

few weeks after this, the purchase was concluded, and at the close of the season the Minister and his family went down to Canterville Chase. Mrs. Otis, who, as Miss Lucretia R. Tappan, of West 53d Street, had been a celebrated New York belle, was now a very handsome, middle-aged woman, with fine eyes, and a superb profile.

Dorian Gray frowned and turned his head away. He could not help liking the tall, graceful young man who was standing by him. His romantic, olive-coloured face and worn expression interested him. There was something in his low languid voice that was absolutely fascinating. His cool, white, flowerlike hands, even, had a curious charm. They moved, as he spoke, like music, and seemed to have a language of their own. But he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered," said Mr. Erskine; "I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

I hate people who are not serious about meals.  It is so shallow of them.

The is nothing that art cannot express

As he passed out, he used to look with wonder at the black confessionals and long to sit in the dim shadow of one of them and listen to men and women whispering through the worn grating the true story of their lives.