Quotes from Oscar Wilde

Todos estamos en el fango, pero algunos miramos las estrellas

All the spring may be hidden in the single bud, and the low ground nest of the lark may hold the joy that is to herald the feet of many rose-red dawns.

I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that I sometimes don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

MRS. ALLONBY. It is only fair to tell you beforehand he has got no conversation at all. LADY STUTFIELD. I adore silent men. MRS ALLONBY. Oh, Ernest isn't silent. He talks the whole time. But he has got no conversation. What he talks about I don't know. I haven't listened to him for years.

But don't you think one can be happy when on is married? Perfectly happy. But the happiness of a married man, my dear Gerald, depends on the people he has not married. But if one is in love? One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.

Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices, there are no such things. If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even.

Sometimes, the unnecessary is necessary.

Life has always poppies in her hands.

Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful." "One may lose one's way." "All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys." "What is that?" "Disillusion.

Let me be surrounded by luxury, I can do without the necessities!

But we who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments. We have nothing else to think of. Suffering ? curious as it may sound to you ? is the means by which we exist, because it is the only means by which we become conscious of existing; and the remembrance of suffering in the past is necessary to us as the warrant, the evidence, of our continued identity.

You know I have loved him always. But we are very poor. Who, being loved, is poor? Oh, no one. I hate my riches. They are a burden...

If it took Labouchere three columns to prove that I was forgotten, then there is no difference between fame and obscurity.

It is very difficult sometimes to keep awake, especially at church, but there is no difficulty at all about sleeping.

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.

it would be a very good thing if people were taught how to speak. Language is the noblest instrument we have, either for the revealing or the concealing of thought; talk itself is a sort of spiritualized action; and conversation is one of the loveliest of the arts.

To become a work of art is the object of living.

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of being poor.

The fact is that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.

What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. they would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always alive. (Dorian Gray regarding his portrait)

If it was my business, I wouldn't talk about it. It is very vulgar to talk about one's business. Only people like stockbroker's do that, and then merely at dinner parties.

love is not fashionable any more, the poets have killed it. 

Civilization is not by means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.

the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.