Oscar Wilde: Use (page 2)

“Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.”

“A mask tells us more than a face.”

“Every impulse we strangle will only poison us.”

“Why can't these American women stay in their own country? They are always telling us that it is the paradise for women.

It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it.”

“I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.”

“Reported as Oscar Wilde's last words on his death bed…
This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has to go.”

“Life cheats us with shadows.
We ask it for pleasure.
It gives it to us with bitterness
and disappointment in its train.”

“The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.”

“Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain.”

“My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.”

“As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.”

“Conscience makes egotists of us all.”

“So with curious eyes and sick surmise
We watched him day by day,
And wondered if each one of us
Would end the self-same way,
For none can tell to what red Hell
His sightless soul may stray.”

“What a silly thing love is! It is not half as useful as logic, for it does not prove anything and it is always telling one things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true.”

“It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”