“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
Context: With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Variant: There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated (1894)
Variant: If there is anything more annoying in the world than having people talk about you, it is certainly having no one talk about you.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.”
Variant: Often quoted as: Life is far too important to be taken seriously.
Variant: Often quoted as: Life is too important to be taken seriously.
Variant: Often quoted as: Life is too important to take seriously.
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), Lord Darlington, Act I
Variant: There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.”
Source: The Critic as Artist (1891), Part II
The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
Context: Don't imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your perfection is inside of you. If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken from you. And so, try to so shape your life that external things will not harm you. And try also to get rid of personal property. It involves sordid preoccupation, endless industry, continual wrong. Personal property hinders Individualism at every step.
“Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.”
Source: The Happy Prince and Other Tales
“Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.”
Lord Goring, Act II
Source: An Ideal Husband (1895)
Source: The Nightingale and the Rose
“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.”
The Portrait of Mr. W. H. http://www.planetmonk.com/wilde/portrait/wh01.html (1889)
“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Pt. I, st. 7
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
Source: The Ballad Of Reading Gaol
A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated (1894)
