In matters of science it is the
ultimate
sensation.
Oscar Wilde - Poetry
To be good is to be in harmony with oneself. Discord is to be forced to
be in harmony with others.
A really grand passion is comparatively rare nowadays. It is the
privilege of people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the
idle classes in a country.
There is no secret of life. Life's aim, if it has one, is simply to be
always looking for temptations. There are not nearly enough of them; I
sometimes pass a whole day without coming across a single one. It is
quite dreadful. It makes one so nervous about the future.
All thought is immoral. Its very essence is destruction. If you think of
anything you kill it; nothing survives being thought of.
What is truth? In matters of religion it is simply the opinion that has
survived.
In matters of science it is the ultimate sensation. In matters
of art it is one's last mood.
It is so easy to convert others. It is so difficult to convert oneself.
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is
absolutely fatal.
Life cheats us with shadows, like a puppet-master. We ask it for
pleasure. It gives it to us, with bitterness and disappointment in its
train. We come across some noble grief that we think will lend the
purple dignity of tragedy to our days, but it passes away from us, and
things less noble take its place, and on some grey, windy dawn, or
odorous eve of silence and of silver, we find ourselves looking with
callous wonder, or dull heart of stone, at the tress of gold-flecked
hair that we had once so wildly worshipped and so madly kissed.
There are two ways of disliking art One is to dislike it and the other
to like it rationally.
There is nothing sane about the worship of beauty. It is too splendid to
be sane. Those of whose lives it forms the dominant note will always
seem to the world to be mere visionaries.
I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world.
Certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such
extraordinary importance.
A sentimentalist is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and
doesn't know the marked price of any single thing.
