Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish author, poet and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential dramatists in London in the early 1890s. He was a key figure in the emerging Aestheticism movement of the late 19th century and is regarded by many as the greatest playwright of the Victorian era. Wilde is best known for his Gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), his epigrams, plays and bedtime stories for children, as well as his criminal conviction in 1895 for gross indecency for homosexual acts.

Quotes

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship; and it is by far the best ending for one.
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.
Knowledge would be fatal, it is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things beautiful.
Few of our modern novelists dare to invent a single thing. It is an open secret that they don't know how to do it.
He has never written a single book, so you can imagine how much he knows.
The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.
The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.
My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people's.

Business
Oh! don't use big words. They mean so little.
Live the wonderful life that is in you.
Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
Philanthropic people lose all sense of Humanity, it is their distinguishing characteristic.
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

Photography
Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
But I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made.

‹ Prev

Next ›