Oscar Wilde Quotes - Page 36

• The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.

  Oscar Wilde

  Life, Art, Theatre

  Oscar Wilde (1997). “Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Plays, the Poems, the Stories and the Essays Including De Profundis”, p.1026, Wordsworth Editions

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• A grapefruit is just a lemon that saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.

  Oscar Wilde

  Opportunity, Saws, Advantage

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• I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.

  Oscar Wilde

  Education, Ignorance, Squares

  1895 Lady Bracknell. The Importance of Being Earnest, act 1.

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• He wants to enslave you.' 'I shudder at the thought of being free.

  Oscar Wilde

  Being Free, Want

  Oscar Wilde “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, Lulu.com

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• He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize

  Oscar Wilde

  Life, Writing, Poetry

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)”, p.64, Diversion Books

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• I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.

  Oscar Wilde

  Food, Oysters, Sick

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• Tea is the only simple pleasure left to us.

  Oscar Wilde

  Simple, Tea, Pleasure

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated)”, p.888, Delphi Classics

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• It is art, and art only, that reveals us to ourselves.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Healing

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “The Artist As Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde”, p.275, Random House

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• The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!

  Oscar Wilde

  Truth, Lying, Simple

  Oscar Wilde (2000). “The Plays of Oscar Wilde”, p.368, Wordsworth Editions

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• A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say at the age of eighteen.

  Oscar Wilde

  Age, Bishops, Eighteen

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.204, Courier Corporation

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• Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any
  conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into
  weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the
  ideal at all you must not strip it of vitality. You must find it in life and re-create it in art.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Vitality, Weak

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.798, GENERAL PRESS

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• I wonder that no criminal has ever pleaded the ugliness of your city as an excuse for his crimes.

  Oscar Wilde

  Cities, America, Criminals

  Oscar Wilde (2010). “Oscar Wilde in America: The Interviews”, p.70, University of Illinois Press

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• Wordsworth went to the Lakes, but he was never a lake poet. He found in stones the sermons he had already hidden there.

  Oscar Wilde

  Lakes, Poetry, Stones

  Oscar Wilde, Alvin Redman (1959). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.77, Courier Corporation

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• Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything.

  Oscar Wilde

  Pain, Portraits, Oblivion

  Oscar Wilde (2004). “The Best of Oscar Wilde: Selected Plays and Writings”, p.316, Penguin

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• It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man', says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life is a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

  Oscar Wilde

  Passion, Men, People

  Oscar Wilde (1977). “The illustrated Oscar Wilde”

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• Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching.

  Oscar Wilde

  Thinking, People, Insulting

  Oscar Wilde, Alvin Redman (1959). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.209, Courier Corporation

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• It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

  Oscar Wilde

  Love, Funny, Humorous

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)”, p.212, Diversion Books

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• Walt Whitman and Emerson are the poets who have given the world more than anyone else. Perhaps Whitman is not so widely read in England, but England never appreciates a poet until he is dead.

  Oscar Wilde

  America, Appreciate, World

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• The Roman Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone - for respectable people, the Anglican Church will do.

  Oscar Wilde

  People, Catholic, Church

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• An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship.

  Oscar Wilde

  Friendship, Real, Truthful

  Oscar Wilde, Alvin Redman (1959). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.187, Courier Corporation

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• I have pleasures, and passions, but the joy of life is gone. I am going under: the morgue yawns for me. I go and look at my zinc-bed there. After all, I had a wonderful life, which is, I fear, over.

  Oscar Wilde

  Passion, Zinc, Joy

  Oscar Wilde (1962). “Letters”

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• Life! Life! Don't let us go to life for our fulfillment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic

  Oscar Wilde

  Life, Utterance, Spirit

  Oscar Wilde (2014). “The Wit and Wisdom of Oscar Wilde”, p.34, Courier Corporation

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• Misfortunes one can endure--they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's own faults--ah!--there is the sting of life.

  Oscar Wilde

  Failure, Character, Suffering

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.496, Wordsworth Editions

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• He rides in the row at ten o clock in the morning, goes to the Opera three times a week, changes his clothes at least five times a day, and dines out every night of the season. You don't call that leading an idle life, do you?

  Oscar Wilde

  Morning, Work, Night

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.594, Wordsworth Editions

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• Each class preaches the importance of those virtues it need not exercise. The rich harp on the value of thrift, the idle grow eloquent over the dignity of labor.

  Oscar Wilde

  Exercise, Class, Needs

  Quoted in Hesketh Pearson, Oscar Wilde, His Life and Wit (1946)

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