Oscar Wilde: Thing (page 3)

“It is perfectly monstrous,' he said, at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.”

“I'll bet you anything you like that half an hour after they have met, they will be calling each other sister.
Women only do that when they have called each other a lot of other things first.”

“Man is many things, but he is not rational.”

“Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!”

“I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.”

“My life-my whole life- take it, and do with it what you will. I love you-love you as I have never loved any living thing. From the moment I met you I loved you, loved you blindly, adoringly, madly!

You didn't know it then-you know it now.”

“Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton. Nothing succeeds like excess.”

“Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.”

“No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.”

“My dear fellow, the truth isn't quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl.”

“I like talking to a brick wall- it's the only thing in the world that never contradicts me!”

“If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened. It is simply expression that gives reality to things.”

“Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.”

“Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me?”

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That is exactly what things were originally made for.”

“Memory is the diary that chronicles things that never happened or couldn't possibly have happened.”

“Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they're better.”

“I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all. Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live nor the smallest instinct about when to die.”

“It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears
is said to be seen in San Francisco.
It must be a delightful city and possess
all the attractions of the next world”