Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wildewas an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 October 1854
CityDublin, Ireland
CountryIreland
Tread Lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow.
Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is.
There is one thing infinitely more pathetic than to have lost the woman one is in love with, and that is to have won her and found out how shallow she is!
The weather is entrancing, but in my heart there is no sun.
I see that any materialism in life coarsens the soul, and that the hunger of the body and the appetites of the flesh desecrate always, and often destroy.
The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.
Genius lasts longer than beauty
Well, I can’t help going to see Sibyl play, even if it is only for an act. I get hungry for her presence; and when I think of the wonderful soul that is hidden away in that little ivory body, I am filled with awe." "You can dine with me to-night, Dorian, can’t you?" He shook his head. "To night she is Imogen," he answered, "and tomorrow night she will be Juliet." "When is she Sibyl Vane?" "Never." "I congratulate you.
I forget what killed it. I think it was her proposing to sacrifice the whole world for me. That is always a dreadful moment. It fills one with the terror of eternity.
It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man', says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life is a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
My dear Algy, you talk exactly as if you were a dentist. It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produces false impression
I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses anyone for asking any question - simple curiosity.
When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.
I've now realised for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.