Quotes from Oscar Wilde

Death is a great price to pay for a red rose," cried the Nightingale, "and Life is very dear to all.  It is pleasant to sit in the green wood, and to watch the Sun in his chariot of gold, and the Moon in her chariot of pearl.  Sweet is the scent of the hawthorn, and sweet are the bluebells that hide in the valley, and the heather that blows on the hill.  Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?

You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream.

It is sweet to dance to violins When love and life are fair: To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes Is delicate and rare: But it is not sweet with nimble feet To dance upon the air!

To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.

The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible.  What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered.

Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect.

If this is the way Queen Victoria treats her prisoners, she doesn't deserve to have any.

Behind the perfection of a man's style, must lie the passion of a man's soul.

Friendship...is not something you learn in school,but if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship you really haven't learned anything.

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

Then she gave one last burst of music. The white Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The red rose heard it, and it trembled all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the cold morning air. Echo bore it to her purple cavern in the hills, and woke the sleeping shepherds from their dreams. It floated through the reeds of the river, and they carried its message to the sea.

Everyone may not be good, but there's always something good in everyone. Never judge anyone shortly because every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.

A man who moralizes is a hypocrite, and a woman who does so is invariably plain.

I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me

The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If ever I get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.

She has form, he said to himself, as he walked away through the grove - that cannot be denied to her; but has she got feeling? I am afraid not. In fact, she is like most artists; she is all style, without any sincerity. She would not sacrifice herself for others. She thinks merely of music, and everybody knows that arts are selfish. Still, it must be admitted that she has some beautiful notes in her voice. What a pity it is that they do not mean anything, or do any practical good.

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

It would be unfair to expect other people to be as remarkable as oneself

A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.

I never came across anyone in whom the moral sense was dominant who was not heartless, cruel, vindictive, log-stupid, and entirely lacking in the smallest sense of humanity. Moral people, as they are termed, are simple beasts.

The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man's intelligence.

The world is made by the singer for the dreamer.

Religion does not help me. The faith that others give to what is unseen, I give to what one can touch, and look at. My gods dwell in temples made with hands; and within the circle of actual experience is my creed made perfect and complete: too complete, it may be, for like many or all of those who have placed their heaven in this earth, I have found in it not merely the beauty of heaven, but the horror of hell also.