Oscar Wilde Quotes - Page 9

If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first.

I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.

Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her daughter, she is perfectly satisfied

Beauty is a form of Genius-is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in the dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.

But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.

She is a peacock in everything but beauty!

The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain.

I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.

People say sometimes that Beauty is superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.

Genie währt länger als Schönheit.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less then Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable.

I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.

And Beauty is a form of Genius - is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation.

Moral grounds are always the last refuge of people who have no sense of beauty.

Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.

Eᴠᴇʀʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ɪs ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ sᴇx, ᴇxᴄᴇᴘᴛ sᴇx. Sᴇx ɪs ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ᴘᴏᴡᴇʀ!