Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
If one were to live his life fully and completely were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream.
If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it.
one pale woman all alone, The daylight kissing her wan hair, Loitered beneath the gas lamps' flare, With lips of flame and heart of stone.
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.
I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose.
I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.
To be really mediæval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes.
The only way to even approach doing something perfectly is through experience, and experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
He is fairer than the morning star, and whiter than the moon. For his body I would give my soul, and for his love I would surrender heaven.
Come, dear, [Gwendolen rises] we have already missed five, if not six, trains. To miss any more might expose us to comment on the platform.
No publisher should ever express an opinion of the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide.
And, by the way, one of the most delightful things I find in America is meeting a people without prejudice -- everywhere open to the truth.
JACK Your duty as a gentleman calls you back. ALGERNON My duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.
There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them.
After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed and mourning over tragedies that were not my own.
What you really are is a Bunburyist. I was quite right in saying you were a Bunburyist. You are one of the most advanced Bunburyists I know.
Misfortunes one can endure--they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's own faults--ah!--there is the sting of life.
No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.
the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.
Artists reproduce themselves or each other, with wearisome iteration. But criticism is always moving on, and the critic is always developing.
Action is limited and relative. Unlimited and absolute is the vision of him who sits at ease and watches, who walks in loneliness and dreams.
A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life.
The beautiful, passionate, ruined South, the land of magnolias and music, of roses and romance . . . living on the memory of crushing defeats
Lord AUGUSTUS:(looking around) Time to educate yourself, I suppose. DUMBY: No, time to forget all I have learned. That is much more important.
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.
Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.
I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.
"I hope to-morrow will be a fine day, Lane." "It never is, sir." "Lane, you're a perfect pessimist." "I do my best to give satisfaction, sir."
Music is the art... which most completely realizes the artistic idea and is the condition to which all the other arts are constantly aspiring.
Good intentions have been the ruin of the world. The only people who have achieved anything have been those who have had no intentions at all.
And the marvellous rose became crimson, like the rose of the eastern sky. Crimson was the girdle of petals, and crimson as a ruby was the heart
Christ did not die to save people, but to teach people how to save each other. This is, I have no doubt, a grave heresy, but it is also a fact.
Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!
Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world.
Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.
I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses anyone for asking any question - simple curiosity.
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion-these are the two things that govern us.
I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not.
The one advantage of playing with fire...is that no one ever gets singed. It is the people who don't know how to play with it who get burned up.
There is no such thing as romance in our day, women have become too brilliant; nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman.
We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.
I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
Make some sacrifice for your art and you will be repaid, but ask of art to sacrifice herself for you and a bitter disappointment may come to you.
Beauty ...is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon.
Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates.