Quotes from Oscar Wilde

But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look

To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour.

what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose'-how does the quotation run?-'his own soul'?

then suddenly become fascinated by some one else. He would be a wonderful study.

The basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty

You can dine with me to-night, Dorian, can't you?" He shook his head. "To-night she is Imogen," he answered, "and to-morrow night she will be Juliet." "When is she Sibyl Vane?" "Never." "I congratulate you.

Realize your youth while you have it. Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.

A grapefruit is ionly a lemon that saw an oppurtunity and took advantage of it.

I wish I had, for as sure as there is a God in heaven, if he ever does you any wrong, I shall kill him.

I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes. It is well to have learned that.

Ah! what a nuisance people's people are!

The public is wonderfully tolerant; it forgives everything except genius. Life

Good heavens! Lane! Why are there no cucumber sandwiches? I ordered them specially. Lane. [Gravely.] There were no cucumbers in the market this morning, sir. I went down twice. Algernon. No cucumbers! Lane. No, sir. Not even for ready money.

The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for. 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.

So you think that it is only God who sees the soul? Draw that curtain back, and you will see mine.

Suddenly a dog bayed in the wood, and the dancers stopped, and going up two by two, knelt down, and kissed the man's hands. As they did so, a little smile touched his proud lips, as a bird's wing touches the water and makes it laugh. But there was disdain in it.

Leave us some unreality. Do not make us too offensively sane.

How sad it is! murmured Dorian Gray with his eyes still fixed upon his own portrait. How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June.... If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that--for that--I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!

My dear boy, I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all.

Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think.

La ventaja de las emociones es que nos llevan por el mal camino, y la ventaja de la ciencia es que excluye la emoción.

Lord Canterville: I feat that the ghost exists . . . and always makes its appearance before the death of any member of our family. Mr. Otis: Well, so does the family doctor for that matter, Lord Canterville. But there is no such thing, sir, as a ghost, and I guess the laws of Nature are not going to be suspended for the British aristocracy.

I can resist anything except temptation - Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892)

he was punished by the envy of journalists, and by the malignant pedantry of half-civilised judges. Envy in his case overleaped itself: the hate of his justicers was so diabolic that they have given him to the pity of mankind forever; they it is who have made him eternally interesting to humanity, a tragic figure of imperishable renown.