xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“sorrow… is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of
love touches it”

Oscar Wilde book De Profundis

Source: De Profundis

“Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They're the only things we can pay.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Lord Darlington, Act I
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

“My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Cecil Graham, Act II
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

“Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: The Picture Of Dorian Gray

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

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Never mind what I say. I am always saying what I shouldn't say. In fact, I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Source: An Ideal Husband

“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 book The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Pt. II, st. 9
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

“Come, dear, [Gwendolen rises] we have already missed five, if not six, trains. To miss any more might expose us to comment on the platform.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

“Many people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honor.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“He hadn’t a single redeeming vice.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“You are a sceptic." "Never! Scepticism is the beginning of faith." "What are you?" "To define is to limit.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Life is terrible. It rules us, we do not rule it.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Source: Lady Windermere's Fan

“My great mistake, the fault for which I can’t forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet