Oscar Wilde Quotes - Page 6

Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.

Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.

For he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die.

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

It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free.

Every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every human being should be the realisation of some ideal, either in the mind of God or in the mind of man.

Nobody is worthy to be loved. The fact that God loves man shows us that in the divine order of ideal things it is written that eternal love is to be given to what is eternally unworthy. Or if that phrase seems to be a bitter one to bear, let us say that everybody is worthy of love, except him who thinks he is.

There are two ways to dislike poetry: One is to dislike it; the other is to read Pope.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.

I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare’s plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.

The mimicry of passion is the most intolerable of all poses.

With slouch and swing around the ring
We trod the Fools’ Parade!
We did not care: we knew we were
The Devils’ Own Brigade:
And shaven head and feet of lead
Make a merry masquerade.

He lives the poetry that he cannot write; the others write the poetry that they dare not realize.

nothing that is worth knowing can be taught

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

The English novels are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. But one should not be too severe on them. They show a want of knowledge that must be the result of years of study.

You can never be overdressed or overeducated.

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.

Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.

Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.