Quotes from Oscar Wilde

Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given away. The ruby shall be redder than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as the great sea.

we always misunderstood ourselves, and rarely understood others

When a man is old enough to do wrong he should be old enough to do right also.

I don't regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience.

Never mind what I say. I am always saying what I shouldn't say. In fact, I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood.

Create yourself. Be yourself your poem.

Surely Love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the marketplace. It may not be purchased of the merchants, for can it be weighed out in the balance for gold.

I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.

Would you be in any way offended if I said that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection?

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

So with curious eyes and sick surmise We watched him day by day, And wondered if each one of us Would end the self-same way, For none can tell to what red Hell His sightless soul may stray.

I hope you hair curls naturally, does it? Yes, darling, with a little help from others.

LORD ILLINGWORTH: The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. MRS ALLONBY: And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy.

Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is usually Judas who writes the biography.

Nothing should be out of the reach of hope. Life is a hope.

You can have your secret as long as I have your heart[.]

The proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding.

And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Love is not fashionable anymore; the poets have killed it.

Life cheats us with shadows. We ask it for pleasure. It gives it to us with bitterness and disappointment in its train.

Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.

The world seemed to me fine because you were in it, and goodness more real because you lived.

To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.