Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)
Irish essayist, novelist, playwright and poet.
A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. [Answering the question, what is a cynic?]
The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
I am always astonishing myself. It is the only thing that makes life worth living.
Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
On George Bernard Shaw An excellent man: he has no enemies, and none of his friends like him.
We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken.
The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity. Now Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic. There is a very wide difference.
My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.
Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
A simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle.
It is always the unreadable that occurs.
Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One must eat muffins quite calmly, it is the only way to eat them.
The only link between Literature and the Drama left to us in England at the present moment is the bill of the play.
It is to do nothing that the elect exist. Action is limited and relative. Unlimited and absolute is the vision of him who sits at ease and watches, who walks in loneliness and dreams.
There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton. Nothing succeeds like excess.
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.