Quotes from Oscar Wilde

The unread is always better than the unreadable.

Ah! I have talked quite enough for today, said Lord Henry, smiling. All I want now is to look at life. You may come and look at it with me, if you care to.

Look at the moon! How strange the moon seems! She is like a woman rising from a tomb. She is like a dead woman. You would fancy she was looking for dead things.

The pen is mightier than the paving-stone

Being adored is a nuisance. Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. They worship us, and are always bothering us to do something for them.

And once, or twice, to throw the dice is a gentlemanly game, But he does not win who plays with Sin in the secret house of shame

From your silken hair to your delicate feet you are perfection to me. Pleasure hides love from us, but pain reveals it in its essence.

Jemanden zu beeinflussen bedeutet, ihm eine fremde Seele zu geben.

There is no such thing as good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral- immoral from a scientific point of view.

But Venice, like Oxford, had kept the background for romance, and, to the true romantic, background was everything, or almost everything.

To be good is to be in harmony with ones self. Discord is to be forces to be in harmony with others.

It would be more impressive if it flowed the other way (Commenting on Niagara Falls)

I blame myself without reserve for my weakness. It was merely weakness. One half-hour with Art was always more to me than a cycle with you. Nothing really at any period of my life was ever of the smallest importance to me compared with Art. But in the case of an artist, weakness is nothing less than a crime, when it is a weakness that paralyses the imagination.

out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star, there is pain

As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.

They did not understand a single word of what he was saying, but that made no matter, for they put their heads on one side, and looked wise, which is quite as good as understanding a thing, and very much easier.

you seem to be displaying signs of triviality.

Things last either too long or not long enough.

It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. 

I am sorry my life is so marred and maimed by extravagance. But I cannot live otherwise. I, at any rate, pay the penalty of suffering.

One should never make one's debut with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest to one's old age.

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

Devant une facade rose, Sur le marbre d'un escalier.

The critic will certainly be an interpreter, but he will not treat Art as a riddling Sphinx, whose shallow secret may be guessed and revealed by one whose feet are wounded and who knows not his name. Rather, he will look upon Art as a goddess whose mystery it is his province to intensify, and whose majesty his privilege to make more marvellous in the eyes of men.