Quotes from Oscar Wilde

Do you smoke? Jack.  Well, yes, I must admit I smoke. Lady Bracknell.  I am glad to hear it.  A man should always have an occupation of some kind. 

Travel improves the mind wonderfully, and does away with all one's prejudices." "The

I had been foolish in imagining that I had seen anything in it, more than that you were extremely good looking, and that I could paint.

I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like everyone else.

Like the painting of a sorrow, A face without a heart.

he loathed his own beauty, and flinging the mirror on the floor, crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel. It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for. But for those two things, his life might have been free from stain. His beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery. What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts. Why had he worn its livery? Youth had spoiled him.

The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.

Sin is the only color- element left in modern life.

Even when one has been wounded by it, Harry? asked the duchess after a pause. Especially when one has been wounded by it, answered Lord Henry.

Conversation is one of the loveliest of the arts.

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

As the painter looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there.