Every effect that one
produces
gives one an enemy.
Oscar Wilde - Poetry
Life holds the mirror up to art, and either reproduces some strange type
imagined by painter or sculptor or realises in fact what has been
dreamed in fiction.
I feel sure that if I lived in the country for six months I should
become so unsophisticated that no one would take the slightest notice of
me.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is
like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
I am always saying what I shouldn't say; in fact, I usually say what I
really think--a great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be
misunderstood.
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man
is.
The basis of every scandal is an absolute immoral certainty.
People talk so much about the beauty of confidence. They seem to
entirely ignore the much more subtle beauty of doubt. To believe is very
dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live,
to be lulled into security is to die.
Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one
must be a mediocrity.
It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names
to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions, my one
quarrel is with words. That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in
literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled
to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.
A high moral tone can hardly be said to conduce very much to either
one's health or one's happiness.
There are terrible temptations that it requires strength--strength and
courage--to yield to. To stake all one's life on one throw--whether the
stake be power or pleasure I care not--there is no weakness in that.
There is a horrible, a terrible, courage.
Nowadays it is only the unreadable that occurs.
All charming people are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.
There is more to be said for stupidity than people imagine.
