Quotes from Oscar Wilde

I have a dining room done in different shades of white, with white cushions embroidered in yellow silk: the effect is absolutely delightful and the room beautiful.

Yes, there is a terrible moral in 'Dorian Gray' - a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.

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.

I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.

No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.

You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?

Love is easily killed.

Poor? What does that matter? When poverty creeps in at the door, love flies in through the window.

I love scrapes. They are the only things that are never serious." "Oh, that's nonsense, Algy. You never talk anything but nonsense." "Nobody ever does.

I was wrong. God's law is only Love.

He made me see what Life is, and what Death signifies, and why Love is stronger than both.

It is difficult not to be unjust to what one loves.

you will always love, and you will always be loved

Only love can keep anyone alive.

You will always be loved, and you will always be in love with love. A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do.

You came to me to learn the Pleasure of Life and the Pleasure of Art. Perhaps I am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful, the meaning of Sorrow and its beauty.

You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.

it is a marvel that those red-roseleaf lips of yours should be made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing.

The Noblest form of Affection

You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.

Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.

Missionaries are going to reform the world whether it wants to or not.