Oscar Wilde Quotes - Page 64

• One should never make one's entrance with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest to one's old age.

  Oscar Wilde

  Giving, Luck, Age

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• Marriage is hardly a thing one can do now and then, except in America.

  Oscar Wilde

  Marriage, America, Now And Then

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.94, Wordsworth Editions

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• Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary. When her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief.

  Oscar Wilde

  Husband, Women, Grief

  The Picture of Dorian Gray ch. 15 (1891). A similar quotation appears inWilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest, act 1 (1895).

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• All art is at once surface and symbol.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Peril, Beneath The Surface

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.6, First Avenue Editions

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• Immanuel isn't a pun; he Kant be!

  Oscar Wilde

  Pun

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• Music is the perfect type of art.

  Oscar Wilde

  Music, Art, Perfect

  Oscar Wilde, Isobel Murray (2008). “Oscar Wilde - The Major Works”, p.265, Oxford University Press

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• It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Expression, May

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• Art, like Nature, has her monsters

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Monsters

  Oscar Wilde, Moira Muldoon (2005). “The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings”, p.145, Simon and Schuster

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• Nature, which makes nothing durable, always repeats itself so that nothing which it makes may be lost.

  Oscar Wilde

  May, Lost, Repeats

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “Epigrams of Oscar Wilde”, p.223, Wordsworth Editions

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• Shakespeare might have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the white streets of London, or seen the serving-men of rival houses bite their thumbs at each other in the open square; but Hamlet came out of his soul, and Romeo out of his passion.

  Oscar Wilde

  Passion, Men, White

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated)”, p.1491, Delphi Classics

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• Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such
  a paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering. They have to be told of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve them.

  Oscar Wilde

  Exercise, Men, Class

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.1044, Wordsworth Editions

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• In one dancing saloon I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across. Over the piano was printed a notice: 'Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.'

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Piano, America

  Oscar Wilde, Matthew Hofer, Gary Scharnhorst (2010). “Oscar Wilde in America: The Interviews”, p.180, University of Illinois Press

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• Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne.

  Oscar Wilde

  Champagne Drinking, Drinking Champagne, Bachelors

  Oscar Wilde (1899). “The Importance of Being Earnest”, p.2

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• 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.

  Oscar Wilde

  Soul, Gold, Pieces

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.230, GENERAL PRESS

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• He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of his then just conscious boyhood.

  Oscar Wilde

  Love, Passion, Mad

  Oscar Wilde (2016). “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, p.80, Xist Publishing

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• If only the picture could grow old, and I stay young. For that...for that, I would give my SOUL for that.

  Oscar Wilde

  Vanity, Giving, Soul

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• The birds did not understand a single word of what he was saying, but that made no matter, for they put their heads on one side, and looked wise, which is quite as good as understanding a thing, and very much easier.

  Oscar Wilde

  Wise, Bird, Understanding

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.178, GENERAL PRESS

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• Now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.

  Oscar Wilde

  Art, Thinking, Long

  Oscar Wilde (2014). “Le Portrait de Dorian Gray / The Picture of Dorian Gray: Édition bilingue: français - anglais / Bilingual Edition: French - English”, p.196, BookRix

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• I see the moon like a clipped piece of silver. Like gilded bees the stars cluster round her.

  Oscar Wilde

  Stars, Science, Moon

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.665, GENERAL PRESS

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• The worst slave owners were those who were kind to their slaves

  Oscar Wilde

  Slave Owners, Kind, Worst

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.1041, Wordsworth Editions

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• A daughter is a mother's gender partner, her closest ally in the family confederacy, an extension of herself. -Author Unknown As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.

  Oscar Wilde

  Mother Daughter, Mother And Daughter, Years

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• The Governor was strong upon
  The Regulation Act:
  The Doctor said that Death was but
  A scientific fact:
  And twice a day the Chaplain called,
  And left a little tract.

  Oscar Wilde

  Strong, Science, Doctors

  'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' (1898) pt. 3, st. 3

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• So much had been surrendered! And to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape.

  Oscar Wilde

  Ignorance, Self, Mad

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.103, GENERAL PRESS

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• Who is that man over there? I don't know him. What is he doing? Is he a conspirator? Have you searched him? Give him till tomorrow to confess, then hang him! -- hang him!

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Giving, Tomorrow

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.1518, GENERAL PRESS

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• Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things.

  Oscar Wilde

  Government, Unjust, Made

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.1049, Wordsworth Editions

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