Quotes from Oscar Wilde

You talk books away, he said; why don't you write one? I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. I should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian carpet and as unreal.

I feel I must come with you. And will you talk to me all the time? No one talks so wonderfully as you do.

He used to wonder at the shallow psychology of those who conceive the ego in man as a thing simple, permanent, reliable , and one of essence. To him, man was a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange legacies of though and passion, and whose very fleshwas tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead.

You know how I love secrecy. It is the only thing that can make modern life wonderful or mysterious to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.

It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done.

People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self.

Scelgo i miei amici per la loro bellezza, le mie conoscenze per la loro rispettabilità, e i miei nemici per la loro intelligenza.

It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would destroy it.

Through vanity he had spared her.

He seems to read nothing but my books, and says his one desire is to 'follow in my footsteps'! But I have told him that they lead to terrible places.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

Of all people in the world the English have the least sense of the beauty of literature.

As the door closed behind them, the painter flung himself down on a sofa, and a look of pain came into his face.

Hoy en día la gente conoce el precio de todo y el valor de nada.

There was evidently no time to be lost, so, hastily adopting the Fourth dimension of Space as a means of escape, he vanished through the wainscoting, and the house became quite quiet.

truth is rarely pure and never simple.

The worst vice of a fanatic is his sincerity.

The only real people are the people who never existed, and if a novelist is base enough to go to life for his personages he should at least pretend that they are creations, and not boast of them as copies. The justification of a character in a novel is not that other persons are what they are, but that the author is what he is. Otherwise the novel is not a work of art.

Was there anything so real as words?

La belleza, la auténtica belleza, termina allí donde empieza la expresión intelectual. El intelecto es en sí mismo un modo de exageración y destruye la armonía de cualquier rostro. En cuanto uno se sienta a pensar, se vuelve todo nariz, o todo frente, o algo quizá más espantoso.

The only real people are the people who never existed, and if a novelist is base enough to go to life for his personages he should at least pretend that they are creations, and not boast of them as copies.

Industry is the root of all ugliness.

Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about

We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken.