Oscar Wilde

Art, even the art of fullest scope and widest vision, can never really show us the external world. All that it shows us is our own soul, the one world of which we have any real cognisance. And the soul itself, the soul of each one of us, is to each one of us a mystery. It hides in the dark and broods, and consciousness cannot tell us of its workings. Consciousness, indeed, is quite inadequate to explain the contents of personality. It is Art, and Art only, that reveals us to ourselves.

I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream - I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of medievalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal - to something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals.

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 marry.

A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.

It is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.

The only horrible thing in the world is ennui.

In war," answered the weaver, "the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor. We must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die. We toil for them all day long, and they heap up gold in their coffers, and our children fade away before their time, and the faces of those we love become hard and evil. We tread out the grapes, another drinks the wine. We sow the corn, and our own board is empty. We have chains, though no eye beholds them; and are slaves, though men call us free.

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

You don't seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none.

ALGERNON. I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If ever I get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.JACK. I have no doubt about that, dear Algy. The Divorce Court was specially invented for people whose memories are so curiously constituted.ALGERNON. Oh! there is no use speculating on that subject. Divorces are made in Heaven-...

Mary Farquhar, who always flirts with her own husband across the dinner-table. That is not very pleasant. Indeed, it is not even decent . . . and that sort of thing is enormously on the increase. The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one's clean linen in public...

They have been eating muffins. That looks like repentance.

Bad artists always admire each others work.

Men always want to be a woman__ first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about these things. What (women) like is to be a man__ last romance.

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

Pleasure is the only thing one should live for, nothing ages like happiness.

But neither milk-white rose nor red May bloom in prison air;The shard, the pebble, and the flint, Are what they give us there:For flowers have been known to heal A common man's despair.

A flower blossoms for its own joy.