Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)
Irish essayist, novelist, playwright and poet.
It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
However, it is always nice to be expected, and not to arrive.
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lip.
Don't imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you. If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken from you. And so, try to so shape your life that external things will not harm you. And try also to get rid of personal property. It involves sordid preoccupation, endless industry, continual wrong. Personal property hinders Individualism at every step.
Science can never grapple with the irrational. That is why it has no future before it, in this world.
Fool, nothing is impossible in Russia but reform.
In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press.
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity's machine.
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.
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
Lord Illingworth: The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden.
Mrs. Allonby: It ends with Revelations.
The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.
The only creative thought one can have in an institution is how to get out.
Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.
The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.
Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.
High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.