Oscar Wilde

“Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.”

“I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.”

“A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.”

“She is a peacock in everything but beauty.”

“I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.”

“It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.”

“The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman's heart.”

“One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.”

“Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.”

“If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.”

“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.”

“There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate - not to the artist, but to the public, blinding them to all but harming the artist not at all.”

“There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better.”

“It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.”

“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”

“The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.”

“Biography lends to death a new terror.”

“Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.”

“Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.”

“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.”

“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.”