Quotes About Oscar Wilde

The harmony of soul and body - how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, and ideality that is void.

For Man's grim Justice goes its way, And will not swerve aside: It slays the weak, it slays the strong, It has a deadly stride: With iron heel it slays the strong, The monstrous parricide!

I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations.

The only horrible thing in the world is ennui, Dorian. That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness.

But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had never been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal merely because the world had sought to stave them into submission or to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the dominant characteristic.

I would sooner say, or hear it said of me, that I was so typical a child of my age, that in my perversity, and for that perversity`s sake, I turned the good things of my life to evil, and the evil things of my life to good.

My dear Hiram, cried Mrs. Otis, what can we do with a woman who faints? Charge it to her like breakages, answered the Minister; she won't faint after that;

Some subtle influence passed from him to me, and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the wonder I had always looked for, and always missed.

I like the duchess very much, but I don't love her. And the duchess loves you very much, but she likes you less, so you are excellently matched.

Love is a more wonderful thing than art.' 'They are both simply forms of imitation,' remarked Lord Henry.

He did not wring his hands, as do Those witless men who dare To try to rear the changeling Hope In the cave of black Despair.

He atones for being occasionally somewhat overdressed by being always absolutely over-educated. He is a very modern type.

strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us.  Men can be analysed, women . . . merely adored.

Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.

Rugged and straightforward as he was, there was something in his nature that was purely feminine in its tenderness

Lady Bracknell, I hate to seem inquisitive, but would you kindly inform me who I am?

Intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing.

I would sooner have fifty unnatural vices than one unnatural virtue. It is unnatural virtue that makes the world, for those who suffer, such a premature Hell.

I think after Christmas would be better for publication: I am hardly a Christmas present.

Through vanity he had spared her.

Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about

They are more cunning than practical. When they make up their ledger, they balance stupidity by wealth, and vice by hypocrisy.

That awful thing, a woman's memory!

In matters of great importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing.