Quotes from Oscar Wilde

Thou knowest all; I seek in vain What lands to till or sow with seed - The land is black with briar and weed, Nor cares for falling tears or rain. Thou knowest all; I sit and wait With blinded eyes and hands that fail, Till the last lifting of the veil And the first opening of the gate. Thou knowest all; I cannot see. I trust I shall not live in vain, I know that we shall meet again In some divine eternity.

Lady Bracknell: Is this Miss Prism a female of repellent aspect, remotely connected with education? Chasuble: (Somewhat indignantly) She is the most cultivated of ladies, and the very picture of respectability. Lady Bracknell: It is obviously the same person.

The past could always be annihilated; regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable. There were passions in him that would find their terrible outlet, dreams that would make the shadow of their evil real.

It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter, who on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.

in every pleasure, cruelty has its place...

LORD GORING: (after a long pause) Nobody is incapable of doing a foolish thing. Nobody is incapable of doing a wrong thing.

For Man's grim Justice goes its way, And will not swerve aside: It slays the weak, it slays the strong, It has a deadly stride: With iron heel it slays the strong, The monstrous parricide!

The method by which the fool arrives at his folly was as dear to him as the ultimate wisdom of the wise.

There is something in that name that seems to inspire absolute confidence. I pity any poor woman whose husband is not called Ernest.

For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it. It should have the dignity of a ceremony, as well as its unreality, and should combine the insincere character of a romantic play with the wit and beauty that make such plays delightful to us.

Con libertad, libros, flores y la luna, ¿quién no puede ser feliz?

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. In art, as in politics, there is but one origin for all revolutions, a desire on the part of man for a nobler form of life, for a freer method and opportunity of expression

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.

Oh! talk to every woman as if you loved her and to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your first season you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact.

The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.

Where your life leads you, you must go

Don't spoil him. Don't try to influence him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide and has many marvellous people in it. Don't take away from me the one person who gives to my art whatever charm that possesses: my life as an artist depends on him.

My heart shall never be put under their microscope.

The fact is that we look back on the ages entirely through the medium of Art, and Art, very fortunately, has never once told us the truth.

They take their punishment so well, so cheerfully: I go out with an adder in my heart, and an asp in my tongue, and every night I sow thorns in the garden of my soul.

Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.

Life is short, art is infinite.

I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations.

Sweet rains fall on just and unjust alike