Oscar Wilde Quotes - Page 35

• Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.

  Oscar Wilde

  Dog, Strong, Feet

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.152, GENERAL PRESS

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

  Oscar Wilde

  Sympathy, Suffering, Easy

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.216, Wordsworth Editions

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• Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything.

  Oscar Wilde

  Pain, Portraits, Oblivion

  Oscar Wilde (2004). “The Best of Oscar Wilde: Selected Plays and Writings”, p.316, Penguin

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• I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.

  Oscar Wilde

  Food, Oysters, Sick

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• Consistency is the last refuge of the unimagininative.

  Oscar Wilde

  Imagination Creativity, Consistency, Oscars

  Quoted in Hesketh Pearson, Oscar Wilde: His Life and Wit (1946)

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• Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching.

  Oscar Wilde

  Thinking, People, Insulting

  Oscar Wilde, Alvin Redman (1959). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.209, Courier Corporation

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• One is not always happy when one is good; but one is always good when one is happy.

  Oscar Wilde

  Always Happy

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.172, Wordsworth Editions

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• It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

  Oscar Wilde

  Love, Funny, Humorous

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)”, p.212, Diversion Books

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• The 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 Wilde

  Love, Men, People

  Oscar Wilde (2016). “Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast”, p.29, Penguin UK

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• In a temple everything should be serious except the thing that is being worshiped.

  Oscar Wilde

  Religion, Serious, Temples

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• He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize

  Oscar Wilde

  Life, Writing, Poetry

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)”, p.64, Diversion Books

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• As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.

  Oscar Wilde

  Wise, Destiny, Doe

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.154, GENERAL PRESS

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• I write because it gives me the greatest possible artistic pleasure to write. If my work pleases the few I am gratified. As for the mob, I have no desire to be a popular novelist. It is far too easy.

  Oscar Wilde

  Writing, Giving, Desire

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.82, Courier Corporation

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• A grapefruit is just a lemon that saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.

  Oscar Wilde

  Opportunity, Saws, Advantage

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• He wants to enslave you.' 'I shudder at the thought of being free.

  Oscar Wilde

  Being Free, Want

  Oscar Wilde “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, Lulu.com

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• I put my talent in my work, I save my Genius for my life.

  Oscar Wilde

  Genius, Talent

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• The Roman Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone - for respectable people, the Anglican Church will do.

  Oscar Wilde

  People, Catholic, Church

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• 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.

  Oscar Wilde

  Love, Life, Breakup

  The Picture of Dorian Gray ch. 4 (1891). A very similar statement is found inWilde's playAWoman of No Importance, act 3 (1893).

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• Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any
  conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into
  weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the
  ideal at all you must not strip it of vitality. You must find it in life and re-create it in art.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Vitality, Weak

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.798, GENERAL PRESS

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• Wordsworth went to the Lakes, but he was never a lake poet. He found in stones the sermons he had already hidden there.

  Oscar Wilde

  Lakes, Poetry, Stones

  Oscar Wilde, Alvin Redman (1959). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.77, Courier Corporation

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• The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.

  Oscar Wilde

  Life, Art, Theatre

  Oscar Wilde (1997). “Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Plays, the Poems, the Stories and the Essays Including De Profundis”, p.1026, Wordsworth Editions

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• Nobody of any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of sunset. Sunsets are quite old fashioned. To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism of temperament. Upon the other hand they go on.

  Oscar Wilde

  Beauty, Real, Sunset

  Oscar Wilde, Isobel Murray (2008). “Oscar Wilde - The Major Works”, p.233, Oxford University Press

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• Life! Life! Don't let us go to life for our fulfillment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic

  Oscar Wilde

  Life, Utterance, Spirit

  Oscar Wilde (2014). “The Wit and Wisdom of Oscar Wilde”, p.34, Courier Corporation

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• The truth about the life of a man is not what he does, but the legend which he creates around himself.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Doe, Legends

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.197, Wordsworth Editions

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• Walt Whitman and Emerson are the poets who have given the world more than anyone else. Perhaps Whitman is not so widely read in England, but England never appreciates a poet until he is dead.

  Oscar Wilde

  America, Appreciate, World

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