Oscar Wilde, The Picture Of Dorian Gray Quotes
I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.
Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.
The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.
They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about.
I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life.
Humanity 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.
People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.
We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.
The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
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.
In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.
It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.
A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.
There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.
I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.
I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.
And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.
Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.
It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never put one's worship into words.
For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it.
Women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders.
But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.
An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.
The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.
It is the stupid and the ugly who have the best of it in this world
