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Oscar Wilde

277 quotes

“We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For a sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are sentences of death;”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When a voice behind me whispered low, "That fellow's got to swing.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yet each man kills the thing he loves By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is sweet to dance to violins When Love and Life are fair: To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes Is delicate and rare: But it is not sweet with nimble feet To dance upon the air!”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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!”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For he who lives more lives than one More deaths than one must die.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Something was dead in each of us, And what was dead was Hope.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats, None knew so well as I: For he who lives more lives than one More deaths than one must die.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And alien tears will fill for him Pity's long-broken urn, For his mourners will be outcast men, And outcasts always mourn.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know not whether Laws be right, Or whether Laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol Is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, A year whose days are long.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The vilest deeds like poison weeds Bloom well in prison air; It is only what is good in man That wastes and withers there; Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate And the Warder is Despair.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And all, but Lust, is turned to dust In Humanity's machine.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How else but through a broken heart May Lord Christ enter in?”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This too I know—and wise it were If each could know the same— That every prison that men build Is built with bricks of shame, And bound with bars lest Christ should see How men their brothers maim.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From its earliest years every American child spends most of its time in correcting the faults of its father and mother; and no one who has had the opportunity of watching an American family on the deck of an Atlantic steamer, or in the refined seclusion of a New York boarding-house, can fail to have been struck by this characteristic of their civilisation. In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience. A boy of only eleven or twelve years of age will firmly but kindly point out to his father his defects of manner or temper; will never weary of warning him against extravagance, idleness, late hours, unpunctuality, and the other temptations to which the aged are so particularly exposed; and sometimes, should he fancy that he is monopolising too much of the conversation at dinner, will remind him, across the table, of the new child's adage, 'Parents should be seen, not heard.'”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) first seen 1887 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The American Invasion", Court & Society Review (March 23, 1887; submitted anonymously)
“For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is. Private property has crushed true Individualism, and set up an Individualism that is false. It has debarred one part of the community from being individual by starving them. It has debarred the other part of the community from being individual by putting them on the wrong road and encumbering them.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It will be a marvellous thing--the true personality of man--when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flowerlike, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not prove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by material things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything, and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it be. It will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like itself. It will love them because they will be different. And yet while it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing helps us, by being what it is. The personality of man will be very wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Art is this intense form of individualism that makes the public try to exercise over it an authority that is as immoral as it is ridiculous, and as corrupting as it is contemptible. It is not quite their fault. The public have always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity. Now Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise authority over it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot receive any artistic impression from it at all. The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art. The spectator is to be receptive. He is to be the violin on which the master is to play. And the more completely he can suppress his own silly views, his own foolish prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what Art should be, or should not be, the more likely he is to understand and appreciate the work of art in question.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In America, the President reigns for four years, and journalism governs for ever and ever. Fortunately, in America journalism has carried its authority to the grossest and most brutal extreme. As a natural consequence it has begun to create a spirit of revolt, people are amused by it, or disgusted by it, according to their temperaments. but it is no longer the real force it was. It is not seriously treated. In England, journalism, except in a few well-known instances, not having been carried to such excesses of brutality, is still a great factor, a remarkable power. The tyranny that it proposes to exercise over people's private lives seems to me to be quite extraordinary.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If after I am free a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. I can be perfectly happy by myself. With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy? [...] But if after I am free 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 come back again and again and beg to be admitted, so that I might share in what I was entitled to share in. If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him, I should feel it as the most poignant humiliation, as the most terrible mode in which disgrace could be inflicted on me. But that could not be. I have a right to share in sorrow, and he who can look at the loveliness of the world and share its sorrow, and realise something of the wonder of both, is in immediate contact with divine things, and has got as near to God’s secret as any one can get.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source