Quotes from Oscar Wilde

Yes Harry I believe that is true. I cannot help telling you things. You have a curious influence over me. If I ever did a crime I would come and confess it to you. You would understand me.

Women are wonderfully practical,' murmured Lord Henry, 'much more practical than we are. In situations of that kind we often forget to say anything about marriage, and they always remind us.

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. Art is always more abstract than we fancy. Form and colour tell us of form and colour--that is all. It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.

Describe us as a sex, was her challenge. Sphinxes without secrets.

Do you know I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world. Certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance. It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

Mere words.. Was there anything so real as words?

You have never been poor, and never known what ambition is. Wealth has given me enormous power. It gave me at the very outset of my life freedom, and freedom is everything.

I am not going to Egypt,' said the bird. 'I am going to the House of Death.' He kissed the prince and fell down dead at his feet.

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age.

When poverty creeps in at the door, love flies in through the window.

to marry into a cloakroom, and form an alliance with a parcel

It is possible, of course, that I may exaggerate about them. I certainly hope that I do; for where there is no exaggeration there is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding. It is only about things that do not interest one, that one can give a really unbiassed opinion; and this is no doubt the reason why an unbiassed opinion is always valueless.