Quotes from Oscar Wilde

There is something in that name that seems to inspire absolute confidence. I pity any poor woman whose husband is not called Ernest.

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. In art, as in politics, there is but one origin for all revolutions, a desire on the part of man for a nobler form of life, for a freer method and opportunity of expression

The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.

Don't spoil him. Don't try to influence him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide and has many marvellous people in it. Don't take away from me the one person who gives to my art whatever charm that possesses: my life as an artist depends on him.

The fact is that we look back on the ages entirely through the medium of Art, and Art, very fortunately, has never once told us the truth.

They take their punishment so well, so cheerfully: I go out with an adder in my heart, and an asp in my tongue, and every night I sow thorns in the garden of my soul.

THE VOICE OF SALOME: Ah! I have kissed thy mouth, Iokanaan, I have kissed thy mouth. There was a bitter taste on thy lips. Was it the taste of blood?... Nay; but perchance it was the taste of love... They say that love hath a bitter taste... But what matter? What matter? I have kissed thy mouth, Iokanaan, I have kissed thy mouth.

Looking around his hotel room not long before expiring: This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has to go.

He has certainly not been paying me compliments. Perhaps that is the reason that I don't believe anything he has told me.

I don't want to earn a living, I want to live.

For the future let those who come to play with me have no hearts,' she cried, and she ran out into the garden.

She began to complain. Women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders.