Quotes from Oscar Wilde

Define us as a sex. LORD ILLINGWORTH Sphinxes without secrets.

I am not sorry for anything that has happened. It has taught me to know myself better.

Robert, men can love what is beneath them—things unworthy, stained, dishonoured.  We women worship when we love; and when we lose our worship, we lose everything. 

every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul.

My gods dwell in temples made with hands.

They actually succeed in spelling his name right in the newspapers. That in itself is fame, on the continent.

The real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.

Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating.

LORD ILLINGWORTH. The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future. LADY

to marry into a cloakroom, and form an alliance with a parcel

I am quite incapable of understanding how any work of art can be criticized from a moral standpoint. The sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate.

Credit is a young man's capital.

Lady Bracknell, I hate to seem inquisitive, but would you kindly inform me who I am?

It is possible, of course, that I may exaggerate about them. I certainly hope that I do; for where there is no exaggeration there is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding. It is only about things that do not interest one, that one can give a really unbiassed opinion; and this is no doubt the reason why an unbiassed opinion is always valueless.

Why is it that I can't feel this tragedy as much as I want to?

Un cigarrillo es el moledo perfecto del perfecto placer. Es exquisito y lo deja a uno insatisfecho ¿Qué más podemos desear?

All those who come in contact with his [Christ's] personality, even though they may neither bow to his altar or kneel before his priest, in some way find that the ugliness of their sin is taken away and the beauty of their sorrow is revealed to them.

One's days were too brief to take the burden of another's errors on one's shoulders. Each man lived his own life, and paid his own price for living it. The only pity was one had to pay so often for a single fault. One had to pay over and over again, indeed. In her dealings with man Destiny never closed her accounts.

To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour.

Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination.When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.

I'm really very sorry, but it is not my fault. People are so annoying. All my pianists look exactly like poets, and all my poets look exactly like pianists

What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion.