xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“She said that she would dance with me if I brought her red roses," cried the young Student; "but in all my garden there is no red rose.”

Oscar Wilde book The Happy Prince and Other Tales

"The Nightingale and the Rose"
The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)

“Lord Goring: Now I'm gonna give you some good advice.
Mrs. Cheveley: Pray don't. You should never give a woman something she can't wear in the evening”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Act III
An Ideal Husband (1895)

“Charity creates a multitude of sins.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

“The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated (1894)

“Prayer must never be answered: if it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes correspondence.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Quoted by Alvin Redman in The Epigrams of Oscar Wilde http://books.google.com/books?id=qUjQAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Prayer+must+never+be+answered+if+it+is+it+ceases+to+be+prayer+and+becomes+correspondence%22&pg=PA106#v=onepage (1952)

“Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

The Epigrams of Oscar Wilde, edited by Alvin Redman (1954)

“The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man. And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not?”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Gwendolen, Act II
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

“To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

The Critic as Artist (1891), Part II

“When a man has no enemy left there must be something mean about him.”

Oscar Wilde Vera; or, The Nihilists

Vera; or, The Nihilists (1880)

“God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

As quoted in In Victorian Days and Other Papers (1939) http://books.google.com/books?id=LfIjfuQGwOIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=In+Victorian+days&as_brr=0&cd=1#v=onepage&q=notorious&f=false by Sir David Oswald Hunter-Blair, p. 122

“Those whom the gods love grow young.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

A humorous reference to Menander's "ὃν οἱ θεοὶ φιλοῦσιν ἀποθνῄσκει νέος [whom the gods love dies young]".
A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated (1894)

“An individual who has to make things for the use of others, and with reference to their wants and their wishes, does not work with interest, and consequently cannot put into his work what is best in him. Upon the other hand, whenever a community or a powerful section of a community, or a government of any kind, attempts to dictate to the artist what he is to do, Art either entirely vanishes, or becomes stereotyped, or degenerates into a low and ignoble form of craft.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

“It will be a marvellous thing--the true personality of man--when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flowerlike, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not prove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by material things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything, and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it be. It will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like itself. It will love them because they will be different. And yet while it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing helps us, by being what it is. The personality of man will be very wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

“The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

“Good kings are the enemies of democracy.”

Oscar Wilde Vera; or, The Nihilists

Vera; or, The Nihilists (1880)

“People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is ridiculous.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

“Gerald: I suppose society is wonderfully delightful?
Lord Illingworth: To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy.”

Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance

Act III
A Woman of No Importance (1893)

“If we men married the women we deserved, we should have a very bad time of it.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Lord Goring, Act IV
An Ideal Husband (1895)

“I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lip.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

In a journal or later note by George Cecil Ives recording a meeting with Wilde in 1900, Oscar Wilde: Myths, Miracles and Imitations (Cambridge University Press,1996), John Stokes

“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 (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

"A New Calendar," The Pall Mall Gazette http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/1307/ (February 17, 1887)