Quotes from Oscar Wilde

And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

My dear boy, I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all. Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.

Art and art only, can make archaeology beautiful; and the theatric art can use it most directly and most vividly, for it can combine in one exquisite presentation the illusion of actual life with the wonder of the unreal world.

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

We look to the archaeologist for the materials, to the artist for the method.

Women rule the world. I assure you we can't bear mediocrities. We women, as some one says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all.

Sibyl Vane to 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 their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. My God, Harry, how I worship her! He was walking up and down the room as he spoke. Hectic spots of red burned on his cheeks. He was terribly excited.

I suffered immensely. Then it passed away. I cannot repeat an emotion. No one can, except sentimentalists.

love is not safe

a beleza, a verdadeira beleza, acaba onde a expressão intelectual começa. O intelecto é já uma forma de exagero e destrói a harmonia de qualquer rosto.

No son of mine should ever take the side of the Puritans: that is always an error.

But he felt afraid of him, and ashamed of being afraid. Why had it been left for a stranger to reveal him to himself?

He was dreadfully short-sighted, and there was no pleasure in taking a husband who never sees anything.

Yesterday evening Mrs Arundel insisted on my going to the window, and looking at the glorious sky, as she called it. Of course I had to look at it. She is one of those absurdly pretty Philistines to whom one can deny nothing. And what was it? It was simply a very second-rate Turner, a Turner of a bad period, with all the painter's worst faults exaggerated and over-emphasized.

The tragedy of old age is not that one is old but that one is young.

In my time, of course, we were taught not to understand anything. That was the old system, and wonderfully interesting it was. I assure you that the amount of things I and my poor dear sister were taught not to understand was quite extraordinary.

My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.

Every experience is of value.

To the philosopher women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.

you met me, flattered me, and taught me to be vain of my good looks. One day you introduced me to a friend of yours, who explained to me the wonder of youth, and you finished a portrait of me that revealed to me the wonder of beauty. In a mad moment that, even now, I don't know whether I regret or not, I made a wish, perhaps you would call it a prayer… .

Sir John's temper since he has taken seriously to politics has become quite unbearable. Really, now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.

The people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people.

To be in love is to surpass one's self.

I must confess that most modern mysticism seems to me to be simply a method of imparting useless knowledge in a form that no one can understand