Quotes by Oscar Wilde

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

Ones past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.

The one charm about the past is that it is the past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen. They always want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over, they propose to continue it. If they were allowed their own way, every comedy would have a tragic ending, and every tragedy would culminate in a farce. They are charmingly artificial, but they have no sense of art.

To become a spectator of ones own life is to escape the suffering of life.

But we who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments. We have nothing else to think of. Suffering ― curious as it may sound to you ― is the means by which we exist, because it is the only means by which we become conscious of existing; and the remembrance of suffering in the past is necessary to us as the warrant, the evidence, of our continued identity.

The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world... They live as we all should live—undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet... Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are—my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Grays good looks—we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.

And yet it was not the mystery, but the comedy of suffering that struck him; its absolute uselessness, its grotesque want of meaning. How incoherent everything seemed! How lacking in all harmony! He was amazed at the discord between the shallow optimism of the day, and the real facts of existence. He was still very young.

It is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought.

Failure is only the name that we give to our mistakes.-Oscar Wilde

But somehow, I feel sure that if I lived in the country for six months, I should become so unsophisticated that no one would take the slightest notice of me.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.

The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.

It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artists life is that he cannot realize his ideal. But the true tragedy that dogs the steps of most artists is that they realize their ideal too absolutely. For, when the ideal is realized, it is robbed of its wonder and its mystery, and becomes simply a new starting point for an ideal that is other than itself. This is why music is the perfect type of art. Music can never reveal its ultimate secret.

There is no Mystery so great as Misery.

Oh, I cant explain. When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvellous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I daresay, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into ones life.

People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.

Lord Henry smiled. He gives you good advice, I suppose. People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves.

You are not listening to a word I am saying . . . and I am making the most delightful plans for your future.

But neither milk-white rose nor red May bloom in prison air;The shard, the pebble, and the flint, Are what they give us there:For flowers have been known to heal A common mans despair.

Men always want to be a woman’s first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about these things. What (women) like is to be a man’s last romance.