Oscar Wilde: Thing (page 5)

“We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.”

“To look wise is quite as good as understanding a thing, and very much easier.”

“I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules.”

“The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion-these are the two things that govern us.”

“The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.”

“I am not at all cynical, I have merely got experience, which, however, is very much the same thing.”

“The only thing I cannot resist is temptation.”

“Youth is the only thing worth having.”

“The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.”

“We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it”

“Neither at things, nor at people should one look. Only in mirrors should one look, for mirrors do but show us masks.”

“Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.”

“The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.”

“I have said to you to speak the truth is a painful thing. To be forced to tell lies is much worse.”

“He to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives.”

“Here we allow absolute freedom to the journalist and entirely limit the artist. English public opinion, that is to say, tries to constrain and impede and warp the man who makes things that are beautiful in effect, and compels the journalist to retail things that are ugly, or disgusting, or revolting in fact, so that we have the most serious journalists in the world and the most indecent newspapers.”

“The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact, scarcely any one at all escapes.”

“I am always astonishing myself. It is the only thing that makes life worth living.”

“A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it.”