The Wisdom of Oscar Wilde (4 page)
“The Decay of Lying”
I can resist everything except temptation.
Lady Windermere’s Fan
Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.
“Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young”
Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of physical weakness in the old.
The Importance of Being Earnest
Nowadays to be found intelligible is to be found out.
Lady Windermere’s Fan
We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Lady Windermere’s Fan
The aim of life is self-development. To realise one’s nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature … to sympathise with a friend’s success.
“The Soul of Man under Socialism”
Remember that the sentimentalist is always a cynic at heart. Indeed sentimentality is merely the bank holiday of cynicism.
De Profundis
Every little action of the common day makes or unmakes a character.
De Profundis
Those who have much are often greedy, those who have little always share.
De Profundis
The supreme vice is shallowness.
De Profundis
No one survives being over-estimated, nor is there any surer way of destroying an author’s reputation than to glorify him without judgment and to praise him without tact.
“Great Writers by Little Men”
Anybody can be reasonable, but to be sane is not common; and sane poets are as rare as blue lilies....
“A Note on Some Modern Poets”
How appalling is that ignorance which is the inevitable result of the fatal habit of imparting opinions!
“The Critic as Artist”
What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities.
“The Critic as Artist”
Similarly in
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Temperament is the primary requisite of the critic....
“The Critic as Artist”
He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always a sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity if not a decadence of morals.
“Pen, Pencil and Poison”
Gilbert:
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
“The Critic as Artist”
To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.
“The Critic as Artist”
It is not selfish to think for oneself. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
“The Soul of Man under Socialism”
Like all poetical natures, [Christ] loved ignorant people. He knew that in the soul of one who is ignorant there is always room for a great idea.
De Profundis
Cecily:
I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
The Importance of Being Earnest
Algernon:
If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.
The Importance of Being Earnest
People have a careless way of talking about a “born liar,” just as they talk about a born poet. But in both cases they are wrong. Lying and poetry are arts—arts, as Plato saw, not unconnected with each other—and they require the most careful study, the most disinterested devotion.
“The Decay of Lying”
Many a young man starts in life with a natural gift for exaggeration which, if nurtured in congenial and sympathic surroundings, or by the imitation of the best models, might grow into something really great and wonderful.
“The Decay of Lying”
Lying for the sake of the improvement of the young, which is the basis of home education, still lingers amongst us.
“The Decay of Lying”
Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
A Woman of No Importance
Similarly in
The Picture of Dorian Gray
To get back one’s youth, one has merely to repeat one’s follies.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefit of their experience.
“The American Invasion”
No office is too mean, no care too lowly for the thing we women love.
A Woman of No Importance
Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing worth having.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Youth! There is nothing like it. It’s absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth. The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much younger than myself.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods and sickly thoughts.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
The Importance of Being Earnest
In married life three is company, two is none.
The Importance of Being Earnest
The basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Every experience is of value, and, whatever one may say against marriage, it is certainly an experience.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect—simply a confession of failure.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Similarly in
A Woman of No Importance
The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
What you have told me is quite a romance, a romance of art one might call it, and the worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The thing that lends to life its sordid security [is] the fact that one can never repeat exactly the same emotion.
“The Critic as Artist”
To have a capacity for a passion and not to realise it, is to make oneself incomplete and limited.
“The Critic as Artist”
The aim of Love is to love: no more, and no less.
De Profundis
There is no prison in any world into which Love cannot force an entrance.
De Profundis
The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Besides, women were better suited to bear sorrow than men. They lived on their emotions. They only thought of their emotions. When they took lovers, it was merely to have some one with whom they could have scenes.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Married life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then one regrets the loss even of one’s worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one’s personality.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Dumby:
It is perfectly brutal the way most women nowadays behave to men who are not their husbands.
Lady Windermere’s Fan
Lord Darlington:
Cecil, if one really loves a woman, all other women in the world become absolutely meaningless to one. Love changes one—I am changed.
Lady Windermere’s Fan
Lady Bracknell:
To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.
The Importance of Being Earnest
Chasuble:
But is a man not equally attractive when married?
Miss Prism:
No married man is ever attractive except to his wife.
Chasuble:
And often, I’ve been told, not even to her.
The Importance of Being Earnest
I have always been of the opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.
The Importance of Being Earnest
Algernon:
Divorces are made in heaven—
The Importance of Being Earnest
It is perfectly monstrous … the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one’s back that are absolutely and entirely true.
A Woman of No Importance
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating—people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Like all people who try to exhaust a subject, he exhausted his listeners.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.
“The Soul of Man under Socialism”
For I have come, not from obscurity into the momentary notoriety of crime, but from a sort of eternity of fame to a sort of eternity of infamy, and sometimes seem to myself to have shown, if indeed it required showing, that between the famous and the infamous there is but one step, if so much as one.
De Profundis
It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done.
“The Critic as Artist”
We are dominated by the fanatic, whose worst vice is his sincerity.
“The Critic as Artist”
The old believe in everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.
“Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young”
Good people exasperate one’s reason; bad people stir one’s imagination.
“Mr. Oscar Wilde Again”
Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
“The Decay of Lying”
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
“The Critic as Artist”
When people talk to us about others they are usually dull. When they talk to us about themselves they are nearly always interesting, and if one could shut them up, when they become wearisome, as easily as one can shut up a book of which one has grown wearied, they would be perfect absolutely.
“The Critic as Artist”
Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable.
“The Critic as Artist”
To know anything about oneself one must know all about others.
“The Critic as Artist”
The bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.
De Profundis
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their life a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
De Profundis
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The masses feel that drunkenness, stupidity, and immorality should be their own special property, and that if any one of us makes an ass of himself he is poaching on their preserves.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
I like Wagner’s music better than anybody’s. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
“[Basil Hallward] says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice.”
Lord Henry smiled. “People are very fond of giving away that which they need most themselves....”
The Picture of Dorian Gray
I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do. If a personality fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that personality selects is absolutely delightful to me.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbour with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us.
The Picture of Dorian Gray
“To be good is to be in harmony with one’s self,” he replied, touching the thin stem of his glass with his pale, fine-pointed fingers. “Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others.”
