Quotes from Oscar Wilde

Art creates an incomparable and unique effect, and, having done so, passes on to other things. Nature, upon the other hand, forgetting that that imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeating this effect until we all become absolutely wearied of it.

The curves of your lips rewrite history

He would never again tempt innocence. He would be good.

Nowadays people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

The only artists I have ever known, who are personally delightful, are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfect uninteresting in what they are.

Chaque fois qu'on produit un effet, on se donne un ennemi. Il faut rester médiocre pour être populaire.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better.

Soñador es aquel que sólo encuentra su camino a la luz de la luna y cuyo castigo es ver el alba antes que el resto del mundo.

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By the way, Dorian, he (Lord Henry) said, after a pause, what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose - how does the quotation run? - his own soul?

JACK. I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can't go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left. ALGERNON. We have. JACK. I should extremely like to meet them. What do they talk about? ALGERNON. The fools? Oh! about the clever people, of course. JACK. What fools!

To cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul.

Let those who have not walked as we have done, In the red fire of passion, those whose lives Are dull and colourless, in a word let those, If any such there be, who have not loved, Cast stones against you

The arts that have escaped [uniformity] best are the arts in which the public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it.

memory, like a horrible malady, was eating his soul away

I had a strange feeling that Fate had in store for me exquisite joys and exquisite sorrows.

The harmony of soul and body - how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, and ideality that is void.

As he looked back upon man moving through History, he was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had been surrendered! and to such little purpose!...Hedonism... was to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is but itself a moment.

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love. Sibyl Vane seemed to him to be absurdly melodramatic. Her tears and sobs annoyed him.

If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it in conversation.

Every good story-teller nowadays starts with the end, and then goes on to the beginning, and concludes with the middle...

It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.

It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.