Oscar Wilde Quotes - Page 52

• To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.

  Oscar Wilde

  Passion, Class, Easy

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.191, Courier Corporation

  7 Copy quote

• The bright dawn flooded the room, and swept the fantastic shadows into dusky corners, where they lay shuddering.

  Oscar Wilde

  Shadow, Dawn, Rooms

  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

  5 Copy quote

• It's the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Mirrors, Beneath The Surface

  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.428, Oxford University Press on Demand

  9 Copy quote

• It is chiefly, I regret to say, through journalism that such people find expression. I regret it because there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

  Oscar Wilde

  Regret, Ignorance, Modern Journalism

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.1005, Wordsworth Editions

  8 Copy quote

• Palermo was lovely. The most beautifully situated town in the world - it dreams away its life in the Conca d'Oro, the exquisite valley that lies between two seas. The lemon groves and the orange gardens were entirely perfect.

  Oscar Wilde

  Dream, Lying, Garden

  Oscar Wilde (1962). “Letters”

  5 Copy quote

• Fashion rests upon folly. Art rests upon law. Fashion is ephemeral. Art is eternal. Indeed what is a fashion really? A fashion is merely a form of ugliness so absolutely unbearable that we have to alter it every six months! It is quite clear that were it beautiful and rational we would not alter anything that combined those two rare qualities. And wherever dress has been so, it has remained unchanged in law and principle for many hundred years.

  Oscar Wilde

  Beautiful, Fashion, Art

  5 Copy quote

• I am Irish by race but the English have condemned me to talk the language of Shakespeare.

  Oscar Wilde

  Race, Language

  5 Copy quote

• To be popular I must be mediocre.

  Oscar Wilde

  Mediocre

  5 Copy quote

• Punctuality is the thief of time

  Oscar Wilde

  Time, Work, Lying

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.222, Wordsworth Editions

  47 Copy quote

• To shut one's eyes to half of life that one may live securely is as though one blinded oneself that one might walk with more safety in a land of pit and precipice.

  Oscar Wilde

  Eye, Land, Safety

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.62, Wordsworth Editions

  5 Copy quote

• Out of the unreal shadows of night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off... p 207

  Oscar Wilde

  Real, Night, Shadow

  5 Copy quote

• The Number our envious Persons, confirmation our capability.

  Oscar Wilde

  Numbers, Confirmation, Envious

  5 Copy quote

• Frank Harris has been received in all the great houses - once.

  Oscar Wilde

  Leadership, House, Guests

  6 Copy quote

• I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

  Oscar Wilde

  Love, Funny, Life

  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.55, Oxford University Press on Demand

  24 Copy quote

• What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. they would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always alive. (Dorian Gray regarding his portrait)

  Oscar Wilde

  Grace, Portraits, Would Be

  Oscar Wilde (2005). “Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.104, Prestwick House Inc

  5 Copy quote

• You and I will always be friends." "Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that.

  Oscar Wilde

  Book, Forgiving, Should

  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.352, Oxford University Press on Demand

  6 Copy quote

• The people who have adored me-- there have not been very many, but there have been some-- have always insisted on living on, long after I had ceased to care for them, or they to care for me.

  Oscar Wilde

  Long, People, Care

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.121, First Avenue Editions

  4 Copy quote

• Jack? . . . No, there is very little music in the name Jack, if any at all, indeed. It does not thrill. It produces absolutely no vibrations . . . I have known several Jacks, and they all, without exception, were more than usually plain. Besides, Jack is a notorious domesticity for John! And I pity any woman who is married to a man called John. She would probably never be allowed to know the entrancing pleasure of a single moment’s solitude. The only really safe name is Ernest.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Names, Solitude

  Oscar Wilde (2000). “The Plays of Oscar Wilde”, p.373, Wordsworth Editions

  7 Copy quote

• I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Philosophy, Made

  Letter to Alfred Douglas, Jan. - Mar. 1897

  7 Copy quote

• I forget what killed it. I think it was her proposing to sacrifice the whole world for me. That is always a dreadful moment. It fills one with the terror of eternity.

  Oscar Wilde

  Sacrifice, Thinking, World

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)”, p.112, Diversion Books

  6 Copy quote

• A simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle.

  Oscar Wilde

  Smile, Suicide, Depressing

  Oscar Wilde (2014). “A Critic in Pall Mall: Being Extracts from Reviews and Miscellanies”, p.143, Simon and Schuster

  13 Copy quote

• The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion-these are the two things that govern us.

  Oscar Wilde

  Two, Anxiety, Secret

  Oscar Wilde (2014). “The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

• There is no such thing as a good influence. Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtures are not real to him. His sins, if there are such thing as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.

  Oscar Wilde

  Real, Passion, Thinking

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “The Essential Oscar Wilde”, p.85, Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

• Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar

  Oscar Wilde

  Giving, Ignorant, Listening

  Oscar Wilde (2005). “Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.28, Prestwick House Inc

  4 Copy quote

• Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent people we call the dead?

  Oscar Wilde

  White, People, Wonder

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (with an Essay by Jules Barbey D'Aurevilly)”, p.63, Mondial

  4 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Alfred Douglas

Edgar Allan Poe

Mark Twain

Charles Dickens

George Bernard Shaw

James Joyce

William Shakespeare

Jane Austen