Oscar Wilde Quotes - Page 62

• Civilization is not by means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.

  Oscar Wilde

  Mean, Men, Civilization

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)”, p.229, Diversion Books

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• And her sweet red lips on these lips of mine Burned like the ruby fire set In the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine, Or the bleeding wounds of the pomegranate, Or the heart of the lotus drenched and wet With the spilt-out blood of the rose-red wine.

  Oscar Wilde

  Sweet, Heart, Wine

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Poems and poems in prose”, p.154, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with yourrose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame.

  Oscar Wilde

  Dream, Memories, Passion

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• With subtle and finely-wrought temperaments it is always so. Their strong passions must either bruise or bend. They either slay the man, or themselves die. Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and the sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.

  Oscar Wilde

  Strong, Passion, Men

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)”, p.219, Diversion Books

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• The supreme vice is shallowness.

  Oscar Wilde

  Vices, Supreme, Shallowness

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: De profundis, "Epistola : in carcere et vinculis"”, p.99, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb. American novels, answered Lord Henry.

  Oscar Wilde

  Hands, Verbs, Lord Henry

  Oscar Wilde (2005). “Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.40, Prestwick House Inc

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• Why can't these American women stay in their own country? They are always telling us that it is the paradise for women. It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it.

  Oscar Wilde

  Country, Paradise, Reason Why

  Oscar Wilde (1997). “Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Plays, the Poems, the Stories and the Essays Including De Profundis”, p.27, Wordsworth Editions

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• Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything. Yes, murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-hole in his coat; and when they grow older they know it.

  Oscar Wilde

  People, Buttons, Lord Henry

  Oscar Wilde (2005). “Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.36, Prestwick House Inc

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• Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them!

  Oscar Wilde

  Magic, Vivid, Subtle

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.22, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• 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

  Sweet, Life And Love, Air

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “Ballade of reading Gaol”, p.6, "Издательство ""Проспект"""

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• Well I won't argue about the matter. You always want to argue about things. That is exactly what things were originally made for.

  Oscar Wilde

  Want, Matter, Arguing

  Oscar Wilde (2008). “The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays: Lady Windermere's Fan; Salome; A Woman of No Importance; An Ideal Husband; The Importance of Being Earnest”, p.268, OUP Oxford

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• I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare’s plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.

  Oscar Wilde

  Play, Wife, Secret

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.64, GENERAL PRESS

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• What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. they would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always alive. (Dorian Gray regarding his portrait)

  Oscar Wilde

  Grace, Portraits, Would Be

  Oscar Wilde (2005). “Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.104, Prestwick House Inc

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• A man who marries without knowing Bunbury has a very tedious time of it.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Knowing, Importance Of Being Earnest

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.672, Wordsworth Editions

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• LADY BRACKNELL: Do you smoke? JACK: Well, yes, I must admit I smoke. LADY BRACKNELL: I'm glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Occupation, Kind

  "The Importance of Being Earnest & Other Plays".

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• [on his deathbed in a Paris hotel room] Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.

  Oscar Wilde

  Humor

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was a real joy in that - perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims.

  Oscar Wilde

  Real, Passion, Exercise

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.36, GENERAL PRESS

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• You and I will always be friends." "Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that.

  Oscar Wilde

  Book, Forgiving, Should

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.352, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day.

  Oscar Wilde

  Summer, Flower, Vanity

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.20, GENERAL PRESS

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• Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Anniversary, Sweet

  Oscar Wilde (2016). “A Critic in Pall Mall”, p.227, Oscar Wilde

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• My friend is not allowed to go out today. I sit by his side and read him passages from his own life. They fill him with surprise. Everyone should keep someone else's diary; I sometimes suspect you of keeping mine.

  Oscar Wilde

  Diaries, Today, Sides

  Oscar Wilde (1962). “Letters”

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• The world has become sad because a puppet was once melancholy. The nihilist, that strange martyr who has no faith, who goes to the stake without enthusiasm, and dies for what he does not believe in, is a purely literary product. He was invented by Turgenev, and completed by Dostoevsky. Robespierre came out of the pages of Rousseau as surely as the People's Palace rose out debris of a novel. Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose.

  Oscar Wilde

  Believe, People, Rose

  Oscar Wilde (1999). “De Profundis: The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Writings”, p.159, Wordsworth Editions

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• Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs.

  Oscar Wilde

  Cuffs, Muffins, Importance Of Being Earnest

  Charles Osborne, Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Novel for Serious People”, p.100, St. Martin's Press

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• I've now realised for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.

  Oscar Wilde

  Firsts, Importance Of Being Earnest, First Time

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Importance of Being Earnest”, p.60, Xist Publishing

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• My dear Algy, you talk exactly as if you were a dentist. It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produces false impression

  Oscar Wilde

  Importance Of Being Earnest, Dentist, Produce

  'The Importance of Being Earnest' (1895) act 1

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