Quotes from Oscar Wilde

What is a sensitive person?" said the Cracker to the Roman Candle. "A person who, because he has corns himself, always treads on other people's toes," answered the Roman Candle in a low whisper; and the Cracker nearly exploded with laughter.

Lo menos frecuente en este mundo es vivir. La mayoría de la gente existe, eso es todo.

The blood-stain has been much admired by tourists and others, and cannot be removed. That is all nonsense, cried Washington Otis; Pinkerton's Champion Stain Remover and Paragon Detergent will clean it up in no time, and before the terrified housekeeper could interfere, he had fallen upon his knees, and was rapidly scouring the floor with a small stick of what looked like a black cosmetic. In a few moments no trace of the blood-stain could be seen.

Yet each man kills the things he loves

No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly

The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought, and sold, and bartered away. It can be poisoned, or made perfect. There is a soul in each one of us. I know it.

Discúlpeme, no le había reconocido: he cambiado mucho.

I know what pleasure is, cried Dorian. It is to adore someone.

My dear Hiram, cried Mrs. Otis, what can we do with a woman who faints? Charge it to her like breakages, answered the Minister; she won't faint after that;

I never talk during music--at least, during good music. If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it in conversation.

He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression, or when some thought that terrifies us lays sudden siege to the brain and calls on us to yield.

Some subtle influence passed from him to me, and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the wonder I had always looked for, and always missed.

A rose shook in her blood and shadowed her cheeks. Quick breath parted the petals of her lips. They trembled. Some southern wind of passion swept over her and stirred the dainty folds of her dress. I love him, she said simply.

You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him. He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there. He is a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.

In every sphere of life, form is the beginning of things. […] Forms are the food of faith, cried Newman in one of those great moments of sincerity that made us admire the know the man. […] The Creeds are believed, not because they are rational, but because they are repeated.

There is nothing sane about the worship of beauty. It is too splendid to be sane. Those of whose lives it forms the dominant note will always seem to the world to be pure visionaries.

My dear fellow, I am prepared to prove anything.

I have no ambition to play the part of a mother, and why should I interfere with her illusions? I find it hard enough to keep my own.

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. The thoroughly well-informed man—that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

It is to do nothing that the elect exist. Action is limited and relative. Unlimited and absolute is the vision of him who sits at ease and watches, who walks in loneliness and dreams.

You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing.

I like the duchess very much, but I don't love her. And the duchess loves you very much, but she likes you less, so you are excellently matched.

Surely Love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the market-place. It may not be purchased of the merchants, nor can it be weighed out in the balance for gold.

There is something very morbid about modern sympathy with pain.