Quotes from Oscar Wilde

My own personality has become a burden to me. I want to escape, to go away, to forget.

Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing....

really don't see anything romantic in proposing.  It is very romantic to be in love.  But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal.  Why, one may be accepted.  One usually is, I believe.  Then the excitement is all over.  The very essence of romance is uncertainty.  If ever I get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.

It was winter, and a night of bitter cold. The snow lay thick upon the ground, and upon the branches of the trees: the frost kept snapping the little twigs on either side of them, as they passed: and when they came to the Mountain-Torrent she was hanging motionless in air, for the Ice-King had kissed her.

Are you very much in love with him?' he asked. She did not answer for some time, but stood gazing at the landscape. 'I wish I knew' she said at last. He shook his head. -'Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.All ways end at the same point, my dear Gladys.' --'What is that?' -'Disillusion.

The 19thc hatred of Realism is Caliban's enraged reaction to seeing his own face in the mirror. The 19thc rejection of Romanticism is Caliban's fury at not seeing his face reflected in the mirror.

When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. it is a silly habit, I dare say, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one's life.

Ah! That must be Aunt Augusta. Only relatives, or creditors, ever ring in that Wagnerian manner.

Una rosa se despertó en su sangre y ensombreció sus mejillas. Un agitado aliento separó los pétalos de sus labios, que temblaron. Sobre ella sopló algún viento sur de pasión y movió los delicados pliegos de su vestido

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.    To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.      The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Comfort is the only thing our civilisation can give us.

nothing is really beautiful unless it is useless; everything useful is ugly for it expresses a need

Between you and him there are chasms. He and I are closer than friends. We are enemies linked together. The same sin binds us.

For the past is what man should not have been.  The present is what man ought not to be.  The future is what artists are.

You don't seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none.

Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then

each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. it merely intensifies it.

Public opinion exists only where there are no ideas.

Intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing.

better for him that each sin of his life had brought its sure swift penalty along with it. there was purification in punishment

There is much more before me. I have hills far steeper to climb, valleys much darker to pass through. And I have to get it all out of myself. Neither religion, morality, nor reason can help me at all.

Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you'll never be invited to a party.

The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless. OSCAR WILDE

Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?' asked Lord Henry. 'Because without intending it, I have put into it some expression of all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know anything about it. But the world might guess it; and I will not bare my soul to their shallow, prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing Harry - too much of myself!