Oscar Wilde Quotes - Page 38

• When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Eye, Personality

  Oscar Wilde (2005). “Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.17, Prestwick House Inc

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• Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.

  Oscar Wilde

  Growing, Youth, Growing Old

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)”, p.32, Diversion Books

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• If a woman wants to hold a man she has merely to appeal to what is worst in him.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Want, Appeals

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “Lady Windermere's Fan”, p.45, Oscar Wilde

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• The camera, you know, will never capture you. Photography, in my experience, has the miraculous power of transferring wine into water.

  Oscar Wilde

  Photography, Wine, Water

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• Bigamy ? It's having one wife too much...
  ...Monogamy ? It's the same.

  Oscar Wilde

  Wife, Funny Marriage, Too Much

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• Do you know that I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world? Certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance.

  Oscar Wilde

  People, World, Harm

  Oscar Wilde (2000). “The Plays of Oscar Wilde”, p.168, Wordsworth Editions

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• I am not at all cynical, I have merely got experience, which, however, is very much the same thing.

  Oscar Wilde

  Cynical

  Oscar Wilde (2009). “The Happy Prince and Other Stories”, p.90, Collector's Library

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• The only thing in the world worse than being Oscar Wilde is not being Oscar Wilde.

  Oscar Wilde

  World, Oscars, Wilde

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• It is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought.

  Oscar Wilde

  Sympathy, Suffering, Easy

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.216, Wordsworth Editions

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• The vilest deeds like poison weeds Bloom well in prison air; It is only what is good in man That wastes and withers there.

  Oscar Wilde

  Weed, Men, Air

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Poems and poems in prose”, p.213, Oxford University Press on Demand

  8 Copy quote

• Marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men disagree.

  Oscar Wilde

  Marriage, Men, Agree

  Oscar Wilde (2014). “A Critic in Pall Mall: Being Extracts from Reviews and Miscellanies”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• My dear Arthur, I never talk scandal. I only talk gossip. What is the difference between scandal and gossip? Oh! Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

  Oscar Wilde

  Differences, Gossip, Scandal

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.518, Wordsworth Editions

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• Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world.

  Oscar Wilde

  Suffering, World, Kind

  Oscar Wilde (2008). “De Profundis: Easyread Super Large 20pt Edition”, p.33, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Sphinxes without secrets.

  Oscar Wilde

  Women, Secret, Sphinx

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “A Woman of No Importance (with audio): Enhanced Edition with Full Cast Audio Performance”, p.24, L.A. Theatre Works

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• Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation. The thin beaten-out leaf of tremulous gold that chronicles the direction of forces the eye cannot see is in comparison coarse. It is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in pain.

  Oscar Wilde

  Sad, Pain, Eye

  Oscar Wilde (1909). “De profundus”

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• Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work
  is new, complex, and vital.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Diversity, Opinion

  Oscar Wilde (2005). “Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.8, Prestwick House Inc

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• I am sorry my life is so marred and maimed by extravagance. But I cannot live otherwise. I, at any rate, pay the penalty of suffering.

  Oscar Wilde

  Sorry, Suffering, Extravagance

  Oscar Wilde (1962). “The letters of Oscar Wilde”

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• The proper basis for marriage is mutual misunderstanding. The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married. One should always be in love - that's the reason one should never marry.

  Oscar Wilde

  Love, Men, People

  Oscar Wilde (2016). “Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast”, p.29, Penguin UK

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• The truth about the life of a man is not what he does, but the legend which he creates around himself.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Doe, Legends

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.197, Wordsworth Editions

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• The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilized being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company.

  Oscar Wilde

  Liars, Lying, Stories

  Oscar Wilde (2014). “A Critic in Pall Mall: Being Extracts from Reviews and Miscellanies”, p.60, Simon and Schuster

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• If you want to be a doormat you have to lay yourself down first.

  Oscar Wilde

  Want, Firsts, Doormat

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• Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious, and their method too clearly defined. One

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Clever, Intellectual

  Oscar Wilde (1930). “The Picture of Dorian Gray: The Importance of Being Earnest ; The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Works of Oscar Wilde”

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• The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang Tsǔ spent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all things.

  Oscar Wilde

  Lying, Perspective, Healthy

  Oscar Wilde (1969). “The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde”, p.222, University of Chicago Press

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• I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world… And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom.

  Oscar Wilde

  Mistake, Garden, Tree

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.718, GENERAL PRESS

  9 Copy quote

• It is the stupid and the ugly who have the best of it in this world

  Oscar Wilde

  Stupid, World, Ugly

  6 Copy quote

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