The gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes bring you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses.
Oscar WildeThough of all poses a moral pose is the most offensive, still to have a pose at all is something.
Oscar WildeIt is only fair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always apologize to one in private for what they have written against one in public.
Oscar WildeEarly in life she had discovered the important truth that nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion; and by a series of reckless escapades, half of them quite harmless, she had acquired all the privileges of a personality.
Oscar WildeI am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day—mock me horribly!
Oscar Wilde"I hope to-morrow will be a fine day, Lane." "It never is, sir." "Lane, you're a perfect pessimist." "I do my best to give satisfaction, sir."
Oscar WildeWhat between the duties expected of one during one's lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one's death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up. That's all that can be said about land.
Oscar WildeAestheticism is a search after the signs of the beautiful. It is the science of the beautiful through which men seek the correlation of the arts. It is, to speak more exactly, the search after the secret of life.
Oscar WildeA man is called affected, nowadays, if he dresses as he likes to dress. But in doing that he is acting in a perfectly natural manner. Affectation, in such matters, consists in dressing according to the views of one's neighbour, whose views, as they are the views of the majority, will probably be extremely stupid.
Oscar WildeSo 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 WildeLife cheats us with shadows. We ask it for pleasure. It gives it to us with bitterness and disappointment in its train.
Oscar WildeRich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.
Oscar WildeMy dear young lady, there was a great deal of truth; I dare say, in what you said, and you looked very pretty while you said it, which is much more important.
Oscar WildeEvery American bride is taken there [Niagara Falls], and the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life.
Oscar WildeShe is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.
Oscar WildeOne should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.
Oscar WildeAll the spring may be hidden in the single bud, and the low ground nest of the lark may hold the joy that is to herald the feet of many rose-red dawns.
Oscar WildeKnowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.
Oscar WildeIf you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want.
Oscar WildeThe only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.
Oscar WildeEach little thing that we do passes into the great machine of life which may grind our virtues to powder and make them worthless, or transform our sins into elements of a new civilization, more marvelous and more splendid than any that has gone before.
Oscar WildeA live unexamined isn't worth living. I will add, "A life unlived isn't worth examining.
Oscar Wilde"There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral — immoral from the scientific point of view." "Why?" "Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul."
Oscar WildeWhen I see a spade, I call it a spade. I'm glad to say I have never seen a spade. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use it. It's the only thing he's fit for.
Oscar WildeIt is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.
Oscar WildeIt is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don't mind hard work when there is no definite object of any kind. To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing.
Oscar WildeHumanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.
Oscar WildeMan is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
Oscar Wilde