Loveless marriages are horrible. But there is one thing worse than an absolutely loveless marriage. A marriage in which there is love, but on one side only; faith, but on one side only; devotion, but on one side only, and in which of the two hearts one is sure to be broken.
Oscar WildeA glass of absinthe is as poetical as anything in the world. What difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset?
Oscar WildeIn going to America one learns that poverty is not a necessary accompaniment to civilization.
Oscar WildeIt was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone and can be made as offensive as a brickbat.
Oscar WildeOne's days were too brief to take the burden of another's errors on one's shoulders. Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it.
Oscar WildeA temperament capable of receiving, through an imaginative medium, and under imaginative conditions, new and beautiful impressions, is the only temperament that can appreciate a work of art.
Oscar WildeThe amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one's clean linen in public.
Oscar WildeI now see that sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, is at once the type and test of all great art.
Oscar WildeI am quite incapable of understanding how any work of art can be criticized from a moral standpoint. The sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate.
Oscar WildeArt creates an incomparable and unique effect, and, having done so, passes on to other things. Nature, upon the other hand, forgetting that that imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeating this effect until we all become absolutely wearied of it.
Oscar WildeIt's not hard to get the ideas when they come. They just come... it's painful waiting for them.
Oscar WildePhilanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.
Oscar WildeAh, 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.
Oscar WildeIf a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. but if a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly. If he shut the doors of the house of mourning against me, I would move back again and again and beg to be admitted so that I might share in what I was entitled to share. If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him, I should feel it as the most poignant humiliation.
Oscar WildeWe spend our days, each one of us, in looking for the secret of life. Well, the secret of life is in Art.
Oscar WildeEvery portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
Oscar WildeDon't tell me that you have exhausted Life. When a man says that, one knows that life has exhausted him.
Oscar WildeI love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all. Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
Oscar WildeI envy you going to Oxford: it is the most flower-like time of one's life. One sees the shadow of things in silver mirrors. Later on, one sees the Gorgon's head, and one suffers, because it does not turn one to stone.
Oscar WildeLord AUGUSTUS:(looking around) Time to educate yourself, I suppose. DUMBY: No, time to forget all I have learned. That is much more important.
Oscar WildeThe youth of the present day are quite monstrous. They have absolutely no respect for dyed hair.
Oscar WildeNever speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.
Oscar WildeI am afraid he has one of those terribly weak natures that are susceptible to influence.
Oscar WildeLove is fed by the imagination, by which we become wiser than we know, better than we feel, nobler than we are: by which we can see life as a whole, by which and by which alone we can understand others in their real and their ideal relation. Only what is fine, and finely conceived can feed love. But anything will feed hate.
Oscar WildeYes, I am a thorough republican. No other form of government is so favorable to the growth of art. ...because of the importance it places on the individual, their liberty, self-expression, creativity, and personal responsibility.
Oscar WildeIf it took Labouchere three columns to prove that I was forgotten, then there is no difference between fame and obscurity.
Oscar WildeI never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do. If a personality fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that personality selects is absolutely delightful to me.
Oscar WildeI may have said the same thing before... but my explanation, I am sure, will always be different.
Oscar WildeThe proper basis for marriage is mutual misunderstanding. The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married. One should always be in love - that's the reason one should never marry.
Oscar WildeDeath and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
Oscar WildeThere are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make one almost enamoured of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie.
Oscar Wilde