Oscar Wilde Quotes - Page 51

• Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualification.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Men And Women, Qualifications

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.163, Wordsworth Editions

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• As yet, Bernard Shaw hasn't become prominent enough to have any enemies, but none of his friends like him.

  Oscar Wilde

  Enemy, Bernard Shaw, Enough

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• I could never quite accustom myself to absinthe, but it suits my style so well

  Oscar Wilde

  Style, Never Quit, Suits

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• Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Rude, Bores

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• The quivering, ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.

  Oscar Wilde

  Halloween, Mirrors, Done

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.66, Oxford University Press on Demand

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

  Oscar Wilde

  Life, Work, Government

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.810, GENERAL PRESS

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• I played with an idea, and grew willful; tossed it into the air; transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox.

  Oscar Wilde

  Air, Ideas, Fancy

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• What do you call a bad man? The sort of man who admires innocence.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Innocence, Admire

  Oscar Wilde (2016). “Aphorisms”, p.14, Oscar Wilde

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• In spite of the roaring of the young lions at the Union, and the screaming of the rabbits in the home of the vivisect, in spite of Keble College, and the tramways, and the sporting prints, Oxford still remains the most beautiful thing in England, and nowhere else are life and art so exquisitely blended, so perfectly made one.

  Oscar Wilde

  Beautiful, Art, Home

  Oscar Wilde (2014). “A Critic in Pall Mall: Being Extracts from Reviews and Miscellanies”, p.15, Simon and Schuster

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• I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

  Oscar Wilde

  Eye, Men, Blue

  The Ballad of Reading Gaol pt. 1, st. 3 (1898)

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• Shakespeare might have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the white streets of London, or seen the serving-men of rival houses bite their thumbs at each other in the open square; but Hamlet came out of his soul, and Romeo out of his passion.

  Oscar Wilde

  Passion, Men, White

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated)”, p.1491, Delphi Classics

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• 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

  Ignorance, Self, Mad

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.103, GENERAL PRESS

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• Who is that man over there? I don't know him. What is he doing? Is he a conspirator? Have you searched him? Give him till tomorrow to confess, then hang him! -- hang him!

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Giving, Tomorrow

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.1518, GENERAL PRESS

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• Newspapers have degenerated. They may now be absolutely relied upon.

  Oscar Wilde

  Media, News, May

  1889 'The Decay of Lying', first published in the Nineteenth Century Review.

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• The sign of a Philistine age is the cry of immorality against art.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Atheism, Age

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated)”, p.1618, Delphi Classics

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• Newspapers. . . give us the bald, sordid, disgusting facts of life. They chronicle, with degrading avidity, the sins of the second-rate, and with the conscientiousness of the illiterate give us accurate and prosaic details. . .

  Oscar Wilde

  Giving, Facts, Details

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.697, GENERAL PRESS

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• You are young. No hungry generations tread you down. The past does not mock you with the ruins of a beauty the secret of whose creation you have lost

  Oscar Wilde

  Past, Secret, Doe

  Oscar Wilde (2011). “Epigrams and Aphorisms”, p.126, BoD – Books on Demand

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• It is absurd to say that the age of miracles is past. It has not yet begun.

  Oscar Wilde

  Future, Past, Miracle

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.107, Courier Corporation

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• By the artificial separation of soul and body men have invented a Realism that is vulgar and an Idealism that is void.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Soul And Body, Void

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• Life! Life! Don't let us go to life for our fulfilment or our experience. Life makes us pay too high a price for its wares, and we purchase the meanest of its secrets at a cost that is monstrous and infinite.

  Oscar Wilde

  Secret, Cost, Pay

  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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• To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour

  Oscar Wilde

  Self, Ruined, Poetry Is

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.47, GENERAL PRESS

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• Lawyers have been known to wrest from reluctant juries triumphant verdicts of acquittal for their clients, even when those clients, as often happens, were clearly and unmistakably innocent.

  Oscar Wilde

  Humor, Law, Clients

  Oscar Wilde (1999). “De Profundis: The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Writings”, p.143, Wordsworth Editions

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• I am afraid that we are beginning to be over-educated; at least everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching -that is really what our enthusiasm for education has come to.

  Oscar Wilde

  Teaching, Taken, Enthusiasm

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• I am afraid that you have been listening to the conversation of someone older than yourself. That is always a dangerous thing to do, and if you allow it to degenerate into a habit, you will find it absolutely fatal to any intellectual development.

  Oscar Wilde

  Intellectual, Listening, Degenerates

  Oscar Wilde, Isobel Murray (2008). “Oscar Wilde - The Major Works”, p.248, Oxford University Press

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• Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious.

  Oscar Wilde

  Notorious, Ifs

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.248, Courier Corporation

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