1
A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.Oscar Wilde
2
You have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvelous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupidOscar Wilde
3
When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy.Oscar Wilde
4
The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. 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. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.Oscar Wilde
5
I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life.Oscar Wilde
6
But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.Oscar Wilde
7
What fire does not destroy, it hardensOscar Wilde
8
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.Oscar Wilde
9
Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.Oscar Wilde
10
It is perfectly monstrous, ' he said, at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.Oscar Wilde
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You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.Oscar Wilde
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Even things that are true can be proved.Oscar Wilde
13
Women have no appreciation of good looks-at least, good women have not.Oscar Wilde
14
Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight rope. When the verities become acrobats, we can judge them.Oscar Wilde
15
Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.Oscar Wilde
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But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.Oscar Wilde
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The only horrible thing in the world is ennui.Oscar Wilde
18
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.Oscar Wilde
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I had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel.Oscar Wilde
20
Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.Oscar Wilde
21
It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free.Oscar Wilde
22
I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that when one loses one's good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. Your picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.Oscar Wilde
23
So much had been surrendered! And to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape (...)Oscar Wilde
24
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.Oscar Wilde
25
We all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. 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-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.Oscar Wilde
26
Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.Oscar Wilde
27
The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.Oscar Wilde
28
You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one.Oscar Wilde
29
Punctuality is the thief of time.Oscar Wilde
30
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.Oscar Wilde
31
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.Oscar Wilde
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Most people are boring and stupid.Oscar Wilde
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There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating- people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.Oscar Wilde
34
He wants to enslave you.'' I shudder at the thought of being free.Oscar Wilde
35
I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.Oscar Wilde
36
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.Oscar Wilde
37
Women treat us [men] like humanity treats gods — they worship us and keep bothering us to do something.Oscar Wilde
38
As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her daughter, she is perfectly satisfiedOscar Wilde
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Women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders.Oscar Wilde
40
To be popular one must be a mediocrity."" Not with Women, " said the duchess, shaking her head; "and women rule the world. I assure you we can't bear mediocrities. We women, as someone says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all."" It seems to me that we never do anything else, " murmered Dorian.Oscar Wilde
41
She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. It is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image precious.Oscar Wilde
42
A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.Oscar Wilde
43
She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. It is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image precious. Her feet are very pretty, but they are not feet of clay. White porcelain feet, if you like. They have been through the fire, and what fire does not destroy, it hardens. She has had experiences.Oscar Wilde
44
Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination. They are limited to their century. No glamour every transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in any of them.Oscar Wilde
45
But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.Oscar Wilde
46
Beauty is a form of Genius--is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in the dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.Oscar Wilde
47
People say sometimes that Beauty is superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.Oscar Wilde
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She is a peacock in everything but beauty!Oscar Wilde
49
I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day–mock me horribly!Oscar Wilde
50
I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.Oscar Wilde