Quotes from Oscar Wilde

Would you like to know the great drama of my life? It is that I have put my genius into my life...I have put only my talent into my works.

To look wise is quite as good as understanding a thing, and very much easier.

Only love can keep anyone alive...

Lord Illingworth told me this morning that there was an orchid there as beautiful as the seven deadly sins.

The long black nights, when the moon hides her face, when the stars are afraid, are not so black. The silence that dwells in the forest is not so black. There is nothing in the world so black as thy hair.

The only thing I cannot resist is temptation.

The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art.

The longer I live, Dorian, the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us. In art, as in politics, les grand-pères ont toujours tort.

Youth is the only thing worth having.

It is quite true that I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man usually gives to a friend. Somehow, I had never loved a woman. I suppose I never had time. Perhaps, as Harry says, a really grande passion is the privilege of those who have nothing to do, and that is the use of the idle classes in a country

The sky was pure opal now.

Nobody is worthy to be loved. The fact that God loves man shows us that in the divine order of ideal things it is written that eternal love is to be given to what is eternally unworthy. Or if that phrase seems to be a bitter one to bear, let us say that everybody is worthy of love, except him who thinks he is.