Quotes from Oscar Wilde

The weather is entrancing, but in my heart there is no sun.

In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.

One can live for years sometimes without living at all, and then all life comes crowding into one single hour.

Behind Joy and Laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind Sorrow there is always Sorrow. Pain, unlike Pleasure, wears no mask.

To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honor

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

I threw the pearl of my soul into a cup of wine. I went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes. I lived on honeycomb.

Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good.

There are works which wait, and which one does not understand for a long time; the reason is that they bring answers to questions which have not yet been raised; for the question often arrives a terribly long time after the answer.

It was an ill-omened place. Death walked there in the sunlight.

I have found that all ugly things are made by those who strive to make something beautiful, and that all beautiful things are made by those who strive to make something useful.

That is one of the secrets of life - to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul. You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.

And all men kill the thing they love, By all let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!" Ballad of Reading Gaol, 1898

Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.

The well bred contradict other people. the wise contradict themselves.

Men become old, but they never become good.

We have quite the same ideas. No; I think our ideas are quite different. But he has been most pleasant.

LORD ILLINGWORTH. As George Harford I had everything I wanted. Now I have merely everything that other people want, which isn't nearly so pleasant.

I don't want to see him alone. He says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice. Lord Henry smiled. People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.

I had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

In literature mere egotism is delightful.

But you don't really mean to say that you couldn't love me if my name wasn't Ernest? GWENDOLEN: But your name is Ernest. JACK: Yes, I know it is. But supposing it was something else? Do you mean to say you couldn't love me then? GWENDOLEN (glibly) : Ah! that is clearly a metaphysical speculation, and like most metaphysical speculations has very little reference at all to the actual facts of real life, as we know them.

Who are you? he said. I am the Happy Prince. Why are you weeping then? asked the swallow; you have quite drenched me.