Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde:

(Dublin, 16 October 1854 – Paris, 30 November 1900).

Writer, poet and aesthete of Irish descent who lived in England for much of his life.

 

An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship. It starts in the right manner.

Too many people today know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

For in art there is no such thing as a universal truth. A Truth in art is that whose contradictory is also true.

Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.

The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.

Nature is a wet place where large numbers of ducks fly overhead uncooked.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

…and all at once, summer collapsed into fall.

With freedom, books, flowers and the moon, who could not be happy?

I think it’s very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

They’ve promised that dreams can come true – but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too.

I think that generosity is the essence of friendship.

Some cause happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Wisdom comes with winters.

After the first glass ( of Absinthe) you see things the way you want to see them. After the second glass you see things as they are not and after the third glass you see things as they really are and that is the most horrible thing of all.

All great ideas are dangerous.

Always be a little unexpected.

If you tell the truth, you can be sure that sooner or later you will be caught out.

I like men who have a future and women who have a past.

A truth ceases to be true as soon as more than one person believes in it.

Just as those who do not love Plato more than truth cannot pass beyond the threshold of Academe, so those who do not love beauty more than truth never know the inmost shrine of art.

People are least themselves when they just act. Give them a mask and they will tell the truth.

Friendship is far more tragic than love. It last longer.

Generosity is the essence of friendship.

A map of the world on which Utopia does not appear is not worth looking at.

And all at once, summer collapsed into fall.