A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public are to him non-existent

Keen winter stabs the breasts of MayWhose crimson roses burst his frost,Ships tempest-tossedWill find a harbour in some bay,And so we may.

I drink to separate my body from my soul.

A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.

I don’t want to earn my living, I want to live.

Experience is a question of instinct about life.

As for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.

Wenn ein Mann alt genug ist, um unrecht zu tun, so sollte er alt genug sein, um recht zu tun.

One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.

One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most...

I’m exhausted. I spent all morning putting in a comma and all afternoon taking it out

Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.

The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.

Women have no appreciation of good looks-at least, good women have not.

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

Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

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

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

I would sooner lose my best friend than my worst enemy. To have friends, you know, one need only be good-natured; but when a man has no enemy left there must be something mean about...

And yet it was not the mystery, but the comedy of suffering that struck him; its absolute uselessness, its grotesque want of meaning. How incoherent everything seemed! How lacking in all harmony! He was amazed...

But youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.

The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial.

I hardly think that any Socialist, nowadays, would seriously propose that an inspector should call every morning at each house to see that each citizen rose up and did manual labour for eight hours.

I can resist anything except temptation.

Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development.

After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most...

Hello, I am Oscar Wilde

It takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it. And even more courage to see it in the one you love

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

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.

This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back again.

The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain.

A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between Art and Nature.

To begin with, I dined there on Monday, and once a week is quite enough to dine with one’s own relations.

Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as...

In the strangely simple economy of the world people only get what they give, and to those who have not enough imagination to penetrate the mere outward of things and feel pity, what pity can...

Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.

Dabar mes klaidingai suprantam patys save, o kitų visai nesuprantam. Patirtis neturi jokios moralinės vertės. Tai tik vardas, kuriuo žmonės vadina savo klaidas.

There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch of the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current...

Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood

It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in suchan inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, theirabsolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lackof style. They affect...

How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

What fire does not destroy, it hardens

The proper basis for marriage is mutual misunderstanding. The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married. One should always be in love – that’s the reason one should never...

The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing.