Quotes by Oscar Wilde

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Of course to one so modern as I am, `Enfant de mon siècle,’ merely to look at the world will be always lovely. I tremble with pleasure when I think that on the very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and that I shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one, and make the other toss the pale purple of its plumes, so that all the air shall be Arabia for me. Linnaeus fell on his knees and wept for joy when he saw for the first time the long heath of some English upland made yellow with the tawny aromatic brooms of the common furze; and I know that for me, to whom flowers are part of desire, there are tears waiting in the petals of some rose. It has always been so with me from my boyhood. There is not a single colour hidden away in the chalice of a flower, or the curve of a shell, to which, by some subtle sympathy with the very soul of things, my nature does not answer. Like Gautier, I have always been one of those ‘pour qui le monde visible existe.

Even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less then Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable.

It is rarely in the worlds history that its ideal has been one of joy and beauty. The worship of pain has far more often dominated the world.

Cold were the lips, yet he kissed them. Salt was the honey of the hair, yet he tasted it with a bitter joy. He kissed the closed eyelids, and the wild spray that lay upon their cups was less salt than his tears. And to the dead thing he made confession. Into the shells of its ears he poured the harsh wine of his tale. He put the little hands round his neck, and with his fingers he touched the thin reed of the throat. Bitter, bitter was his joy, and full of strange gladness was his pain.

Beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins

Inteligence lives longer than beauty.

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. Worlds had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow...

...art had no moral responsibility. Art, he argued, should strive only to be a beautiful object entirely separate from its creator.

The world loves the Saint, and Christ loves the sinner.

Because to influence a person is to give him ones own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one elses music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize ones nature perfectly -- that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to oneself. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion -- these are the two things that govern us.

There is no such thing as a good influence. Because to influence a person is to give him ones own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtures are not real to him. His sins, if there are such thing as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone elses music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.

I drink to separate my body from my soul.

To be really mediæval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes.

What men call the shadow of the body is not the shadow of the body, but is the body of the soul.

So with curious eyes and sick surmiseWe watched him day by day,And wondered if each one of usWould end the self-same way,For none can tell to what red HellHis sightless soul may stray.

The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?

And after the second year was over, the Soul said to the young Fisherman at night-time, and as he sat in the wattled house alone, Lo! now I have tempted thee with evil, and I have tempted thee with good, and thy love is stronger than I am. Wherefore will I tempt thee no longer, but I pray thee to suffer me to enter thy heart, that I may be with thee even as before.Surely thou mayest enter, said the young Fisherman, for in the days when with no heart thou didst go through the world thou must have suffered.Alas! cried his Soul, I can find no place of entrance, so compassed about with love is this heart of thine.

And the young Fisherman said to himself: How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that the Soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver.

Because to influence a person is to give him ones own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one elses music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize ones nature perfectly -- that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to ones self.