Nowadays all the married men live like
bachelors
and all the bachelors
like married men.
like married men.
Oscar Wilde - Poetry
Good artists exist simply on what they make, and consequently
are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.
What are the virtues? Nature, Renan tells us, cares little about
chastity, and it may be that it is to the shame of the Magdalen, and not
to their own purity, that the Lucretias of modern life owe their freedom
from stain. Charity, as even those of whose religion it makes a formal
part have been compelled to acknowledge, creates a multitude of evils.
The mere existence of conscience, that faculty of which people prate so
much nowadays, and are so ignorantly proud, is a sign of our imperfect
development. It must be merged in instinct before we become fine.
Self-denial is simply a method by which man arrests his progress, and
self-sacrifice a survival of the mutilation of the savage, part of that
old worship of pain which is so terrible a factor in the history of the
world, and which even now makes its victims day by day and has its
altars in the land. Virtues! Who knows what the virtues are? Not you.
Not I. Not anyone. It is well for our vanity that we slay the criminal,
for if we suffered him to live he might show us what we had gained by
his crime. It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his
martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.
Nowadays all the married men live like bachelors and all the bachelors
like married men.
The higher education of men is what I should like to see. Men need it so
sadly.
The world is perfectly packed with good women. To know them is a
middle-class education.
Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of
physical weakness in the old.
Our husbands never appreciate anything in us. We have to go to others
for that.
Most women in London nowadays seem to furnish their rooms with nothing
but orchids, foreigners and French novels.
The canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of
art. Form is absolutely essential to it. It should have the dignity of a
ceremony as well as its unreality, and should combine the insincere
character of a romantic play with the wit and beauty that make such
plays delightful to us. Is sincerity such a terrible thing? I think not.
It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old but that one is young.
are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.
What are the virtues? Nature, Renan tells us, cares little about
chastity, and it may be that it is to the shame of the Magdalen, and not
to their own purity, that the Lucretias of modern life owe their freedom
from stain. Charity, as even those of whose religion it makes a formal
part have been compelled to acknowledge, creates a multitude of evils.
The mere existence of conscience, that faculty of which people prate so
much nowadays, and are so ignorantly proud, is a sign of our imperfect
development. It must be merged in instinct before we become fine.
Self-denial is simply a method by which man arrests his progress, and
self-sacrifice a survival of the mutilation of the savage, part of that
old worship of pain which is so terrible a factor in the history of the
world, and which even now makes its victims day by day and has its
altars in the land. Virtues! Who knows what the virtues are? Not you.
Not I. Not anyone. It is well for our vanity that we slay the criminal,
for if we suffered him to live he might show us what we had gained by
his crime. It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his
martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.
Nowadays all the married men live like bachelors and all the bachelors
like married men.
The higher education of men is what I should like to see. Men need it so
sadly.
The world is perfectly packed with good women. To know them is a
middle-class education.
Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of
physical weakness in the old.
Our husbands never appreciate anything in us. We have to go to others
for that.
Most women in London nowadays seem to furnish their rooms with nothing
but orchids, foreigners and French novels.
The canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of
art. Form is absolutely essential to it. It should have the dignity of a
ceremony as well as its unreality, and should combine the insincere
character of a romantic play with the wit and beauty that make such
plays delightful to us. Is sincerity such a terrible thing? I think not.
It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old but that one is young.
