Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)
Irish essayist, novelist, playwright and poet.
It is always the unreadable that occurs.
A simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle.
Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.
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.
We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken.
On George Bernard Shaw An excellent man: he has no enemies, and none of his friends like him.
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
I am always astonishing myself. It is the only thing that makes life worth living.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.
For what man has sought for is, indeed, neither pain nor pleasure, but simply Life. Man has sought to live intensely, fully, perfectly. When he can do so without exercising restraint on others, or suffering it ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to him, he will be saner, healthier, more civilised, more himself. Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.
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.
Oh, I love London society! It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what society should be.
It will be a marvellous thing--the true personality of man--when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flowerlike, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not prove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by material things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything, and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it be. It will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like itself. It will love them because they will be different. And yet while it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing helps us, by being what it is. The personality of man will be very wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child.
His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning.
Como Chesterton, como Lang, como Boswell, Wilde es de aquellos venturosos que pueden prescindir de la aprobación de la crítica y aun, a veces, de la aprobación del lector, pues el agrado que nos proporciona su trato es irresistible y constante.
Sooner or later we have all to pay for what we do.
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.