Oscar Wilde; King of the Epigram
Several weeks ago, I set out to read, collect, collate, and share a few of my favorite epigrams by Oscar Wilde. Those several weeks later, I am left with dozens and dozens of indispensable pithy observations that I am thoroughly unable to parse or whittle down any farther. Many are sobering, some silly, most witty and all revealing of the artist's true vision. Thus, I present these and crown the author with the sobriquet, King of the Epigram.
If, with the literate, I am
If, with the literate, I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.
- Dorothy Parker (1937)
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 -- 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams and plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment for criminal homosexual conduct, which was followed by his early death. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde
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The Early Years
God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be
a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not
famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time
and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end
that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps
that will be the end of me too.
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied
with the best.
To be great is to be misunderstood.
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies
for it.
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of
our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some
perfectly uninteresting event.
A simile committing suicide is always a depressing
spectacle.
And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic
point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to
alter it every six months.
We have really everything in common with America
nowadays, except, of course, language.
It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to
give good advice is absolutely fatal.
All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the
secret of their attraction.
Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside
of herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance.
She is a veil, rather than a mirror.
He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of
course, that one shuts one's eyes, and does not look at him.
The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of
death. Salomé (1893).
Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown
earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have
no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
The Canterville Ghost (1887).
I put all my genius into my life; I put only my
talent into my works.
On
George Bernard Shaw: An excellent man:
he has no enemies, and none of his friends like him.
It is better to have a permanent income than to be
fascinating.
One can survive everything nowadays except death.
Psychology is in its infancy, as a science. I hope
in the interests of Art, it will always remain so.
Prayer must never be answered: if it is, it ceases
to be prayer and becomes correspondence.
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a
sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being
loved brings warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.
To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist
– the problem is so entirely the same in both cases. To know exactly how much
oil one must put with one's vinegar.
Life is much too important a thing ever to talk
seriously about it.
Good kings are the enemies of democracy.
Heaven is a despotism. I shall be at home there.
There are few things easier than to live badly and
to die well.
Experience, the name men give to their mistakes.
Indifference is the revenge the world takes on
mediocrities.
When a man has no enemy left there must be something
mean about him.
I cannot understand your nature. If my nature had
been made to suit your comprehension rather than my own requirements, I am
afraid I would have made a very poor figure in the world.
From The
Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)
Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have
nothing whatever to do.
If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never
have invented architecture.
His style is chaos illumined by flashes of
lightning.
Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.
No great artist ever sees things as they really are.
If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
The
Critic as Artist (1891)
Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write
it.
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, or above each other—by language, which is the parent, and not the
child, of thought.
Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the
opinion that has survived.
I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born
in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not
being misunderstood.
The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.
It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his
martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.
Action is the last resource of those who know not
how to dream.
It is through art, and through art only, that we can
realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves
from the sordid perils of actual existence.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own
person. Give him a mask, and he will
tell you the truth.
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great
deal of it is absolutely fatal.
It is to do nothing that the elect exist. 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.
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.
It is chiefly, I regret to say, through journalism
that such people find expression. I regret it because there is much to be said
in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it
keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling
the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little
importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it
makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.
To be good, according to the vulgar standard of
goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of
sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion
for middle-class respectability.
There is no sin except stupidity.
Ah! Don't say you agree with me. When people agree
with me I always feel I must be wrong.
I
England has done one thing; it has invented and
established Public Opinion, which is an attempt to organize the ignorance of
the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force.
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by
moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the
world.
One is tempted to define man as a rational animal
who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with
the dictates of reason.
THE
PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
You will always be fond of me. I represent to
you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.
Experience is merely
the name men gave to their mistakes.
Those who find ugly
meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a
fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the
cultivated. For these there is hope.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
I don't want to be at
the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate
them.
The only way to get
rid of temptation is to yield to it.
There is only one
thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked
about.
I am too fond of reading
books to care to write them.
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.
Behind every exquisite
thing that existed, there was something tragic.
Men marry because they
are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.
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.
Nowadays 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.
Nothing can cure the
soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
Words! Mere words! How
terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from
them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to
give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as
sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as
words?
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.
Some things are more
precious because they don't last long.
Laughter is not at all
a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is by far the best ending for one.
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing,
it is always from the noblest motives.
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
I have grown to love
secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or
marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.
A man can be happy with
any woman as long as he does not love her.
She is all the great
heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I
must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of
the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to
stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.
I love acting. It is
so much more real than life.
She is very clever,
too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.
Always! That is a
dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using
it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. It is a
meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a life-long
passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.
What does it profit a
man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
We women, as someone
says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes...
The one charm of the
past is that it is the past.
I am tired of myself
to-night. I should like to be somebody else.
One can always be kind
to people about whom one cares nothing.
You like every one;
that is to say, you are indifferent to everyone.
It is only shallow
people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the
visible, not the invisible....
To realize one's
nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for.
When a woman marries
again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again,
it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk
theirs.
I knew nothing but
shadows and I thought them to be real.
The reason we all like
to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis
of optimism is sheer terror.
As long as a woman can
look ten years younger than her daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
The only artists I
have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists
exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in
what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all
creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their
rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a
book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry
that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not
realize.
There was so much in
you that charmed me that I felt I must tell you something about yourself. I
thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted.
They get up early,
because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so
little to think about.
Sin is a thing that
writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.
It is perfectly
monstrous …the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind
one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.
Life is a question of
nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and
passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong.
But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume
that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a
forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music
that you had ceased to play... I tell you, that it is on things like these that
our lives depend.
It is only shallow
people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself
can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at
the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate
them.
It’s a beautiful
woman's fate to be the subject of conversation where ever she goes
There is always
something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to
love.
Women defend
themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange
surrenders.
Women love us for our
defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our
intellects.
Many people become
bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have
ruined one's self over poetry is an honor.
Lady
Windermere's Fan (1892)
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad.
People are either charming or tedious.
Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only
pleasant things to pay are compliments. They're the only things we can pay.
I can resist everything except temptation.
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk
seriously about it.
I am the only person in the world I should like to
know thoroughly.
As soon as people are old enough to know better,
they don't know anything at all.
Between men and women there is no friendship
possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
My own business always bores me to death. I prefer
other people's.
Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But
scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking
at the stars.
In this world there are only two tragedies. One is
not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything
and the value of nothing.
What a pity that in life we only get our lessons
when they are of no use to us.
A
Woman of No Importance (1893)
The growing influence of women is the one reassuring
thing in our political life.
Mrs.
Allonby: They say, Lady Hunstanton, that when good Americans die they go to
Paris.
Lady
Hunstanton: Indeed? And when bad Americans die, where do they go to?
Lord
Illingworth: Oh, they go to America. Act I
The English country gentleman galloping after a fox
— the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
The
Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden. It ends with
Revelations.
To
be in (society) is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy.
I am always astonishing myself. It is the only thing
that makes life worth living.
Nothing succeeds like
excess.
The only difference between the saint and the sinner
is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
Children love their parents. Eventually they come to
judge them. Rarely do they forgive them.
A
Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated (1894)
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 English are always degrading truths into facts.
When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value.
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so
little useless information.
In old days books were written by men of letters and
read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by
nobody.
Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the
artist is the only person who is never serious.
To be really medieval one should have no body. To be
really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no
clothes.
Even the disciple has his uses. He stands behind
one's throne, and at the moment of one's triumph whispers in one's ear that,
after all, one is immortal.
Those whom the gods love grow young.
Phrases
and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894)
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
Religions die when they are proved to be true.
Science is the record of dead religions.
If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or
later, to be found out.
Patriotism is the vice of nations.
Only the shallow know themselves.
The foolish ask questions that the
wise cannot answer.
The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect
everything; the young know everything.
To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long
romance.
One should always be a little improbable.
Time is a waste of money.
The only way to atone for being occasionally a
little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated.
The
Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good
example, what on earth is the use of them?
I really don’t see anything romantic in proposing.
It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a
definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe.
Then
the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
Divorces are
made in Heaven.
The amount of women in London who flirt with their
own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing
one’s clean linen in public.
I do not approve of anything that tampers with
natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the
bloom is gone.
My dear fellow, the truth isn't quite the sort of
thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl.
The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to
her if she is pretty and to someone else if she is plain.
Ah! That must be Aunt Augusta. Only relatives, or
creditors, ever ring in that Wagnerian manner.
To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune …
to lose both seems like carelessness.
An engagement should come on a young girl as a
surprise, pleasant or unpleasant as the case may be.
All women become like their mothers. That is their
tragedy. No man does. That's his.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
In married life, three is company, and two is none.
Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see,
if one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people
don't talk.
It is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what
one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture
depends on what one shouldn't read.
I have always been of opinion that a man who desires
to get married should know either everything or nothing.
Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who
haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct
about when to die.
Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.
No gentleman ever has any money.
When a man does exactly what a woman expects him to
do she doesn't think much of him. One should always do what a woman doesn't
expect, just as one should say what she doesn't understand.
I never travel without my diary. One should always
have something sensational to read in the train.
The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the
man. And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes
painfully effeminate, does he not?
I hope you have not been leading a double life,
pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be
hypocrisy.
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That
is what Fiction means.
The absence of old friends one can endure with
equanimity. But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just
been introduced is almost unbearable.
Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The
butter would probably get on my cuffs. One must eat muffins quite calmly, it is
the only way to eat them.
Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only
people who can’t get into it do that.
To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long
engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's
character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.
Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society
is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice,
remained thirty-five for years.
I've now realized for the first time in my life the
vital Importance of Being Earnest.
If you are not too long, I will wait here for you
all my life.
From
An Ideal Husband (1895)
Oh, I love London society! It is entirely composed
now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what society should be.
Science can never grapple with the irrational. That
is why it has no future before it, in this world.
No man is
rich enough to buy back his own past.
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing
to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
Sooner or later we have all to pay for what we do.
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I
know anything about.
Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They
can discover everything except the obvious.
Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They
always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to
be absolutely deaf.
All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should
forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon.
Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is
unfashionable is what other people wear.
The only possible society is oneself.
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong
romance.
However, it is always nice to be expected, and not
to arrive.
Why will parents always appear at the wrong time?
Some extraordinary mistake in nature, I suppose.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always
are.
If we men married the women we deserved, we should
have a very bad time of it.
I don't at all like knowing what people say of me
behind my back. It makes me far too conceited.
The
Soul of Man Under Socialism (1895)
Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were
kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realized
by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so,
in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the
people who try to do most good.
Charity creates a multitude of sins.
Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read
history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has
been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty.
But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like
advising a man who is starving to eat less.
As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but
it is finer to take than to beg.
Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and
exercise such a paralyzing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever
really conscious of its own suffering. They have to be told of it by other
people, and they often entirely disbelieve them.
Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people,
who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community, and sow the
seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so
absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no
advance towards civilization.
For the recognition of private property has really
harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he
possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not
growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and
did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man
lies, not in what man has, but in what man is.
Now, nothing should be able to harm a man except
himself. Nothing should be able to rob a man at all. What a man really has, is
what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance.
To live is
the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Wherever there is a man who exercises authority,
there is a man who resists authority.
The note of the perfect personality is not
rebellion, but peace.
'Know thyself' was written over the portal of the
antique world. Over the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written.
There is only one class in the community that thinks
more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.
Man reaches his perfection, not through what he has,
not even through what he does, but entirely through what he is.
The things people say of a man do not alter a man.
He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever.
High hopes were once formed of democracy; but
democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the
people.
All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those
who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised.
When private property is abolished there will be no
necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will cease to exist.
The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The
Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly,
horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost
impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical
slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is
not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity
is always landing.
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that
the world has known.
The public has always, and in every age, been badly
brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want
of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told
before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when
they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they
are wearied of their own stupidity. Now Art should never try to be popular. The
public should try to make itself artistic. There is a very wide difference.
Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a
disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value. For what
it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit,
and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.
They are always asking a writer why he does not
write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody
else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the
kind he would cease to be an artist.
In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the
Press.
If a man approaches a work of art with any desire to
exercise authority over it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit
that he cannot receive any artistic impression from it at all. The work of art
is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art.
The spectator is to be receptive. He is to be the violin on which the master is
to play. And the more completely he can suppress his own silly views, his own
foolish prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what Art should be, or should not
be, the more likely he is to understand and appreciate the work of art in
question.
There are three kinds of despots. There is the
despot who tyrannises over the body. There is the despot who tyrannises over
the soul. There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul and body alike.
The
first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called
the People.
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it
is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
A man who does not think for himself does not think
at all.
For what man has sought for is, indeed, neither pain
nor pleasure, but simply Life. Man has sought to live intensely, fully,
perfectly. When he can do so without exercising restraint on others, or
suffering it ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to him, he will be
saner, healthier, more civilized, more himself. Pleasure is Nature's test, her
sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his
environment.
De
Profundis (1897) (From the Latin: “The Sorrows”)
De Profundis was a letter written by Wilde while
imprisoned to Lord Alfred Douglas (aka “Bosie), Wilde’s former lover, who
subsequently repudiated him.
The most terrible
thing about it is not that it breaks one’s heart—hearts are made to be
broken—but that it turns one’s heart to stone.
To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest
one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the
lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.
When you really want love you will find it
waiting for you.
I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all
existence in an epigram.
The only people I
would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who
know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests
me.
The gods are strange.
It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to
ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving.
I am one of those who
are made for exceptions, not for laws.
Every one is worthy of
love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is a sacrament that should be
taken kneeling.
Love does not traffic
in a marketplace, nor use a huckster's scales. Its joy, like the joy of the
intellect, is to feel itself alive. The aim of Love is to love: no more, and no
less. You were my enemy: such an enemy as no man ever had. I had given you all
my life, and to gratify the lowest and most contemptible of all human passions,
hatred and vanity and greed, you had thrown it away. In less than three years
you had entirely ruined me in every point of view. For my own sake there was
nothing for me to do but to love you.
The final mystery is
oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of
the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains
oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?
Society, as we have
constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose
sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where
I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She
will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness
without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track
me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make
me whole.
I don’t write this
letter to put bitterness into your heart, but to pluck it out of mine. For my
own sake I must forgive you.
It seems to me that we
all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little. I discern great
sanity in the Greek attitude. They never chattered about sunsets, or discussed
whether the shadows on the grass were really mauve or not. But they saw that
the sea was for the swimmer, and the sand for the feet of the runner. They loved
the trees for the shadow that they cast, and the forest for its silence at
noon.
Art only begins where
Imitation ends.
To deny one's own
experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than
a denial of the soul.
I don’t regret for a
single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one
should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not
experience.
Those who have much
are often greedy; those who have little often share.
Nature....she will
hang the night stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without
stumbling, and send word the wind over my footprints so that none may track me
to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me
whole.
Sins of the flesh are
nothing. They are maladies for physicians to cure, if they should be cured.
Sins of the soul alone are shameful.
What the artist is always
looking for is the mode of existence in which soul and body are one and
indivisible: in which the outward is expressive of the inward: in which form
reveals.
I tremble with
pleasure when I think that on the very day of my leaving prison both the
laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and that I shall see
the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one, and make the
other toss the pale purple of its plumes, so that all the air shall be Arabia
for me.
I believe I am to have
enough to live on for about eighteen months at any rate, so that if I may not
write beautiful books, I may at least read beautiful books; and what joy can be
greater?
All the spring may be
hidden in the single bud, and the low ground nest of the lark may hold the joy
that is to herald the feet of many rose-red dawns.
In the strangely
simple economy of the world people only get what they give, and to those who
have not enough imagination to penetrate the mere outward of things and feel
pity, what pity can be given save that of scorn?
Nobody is worthy to be
loved. The fact that God loves man shows us that in the divine order of ideal
things it is written that eternal love is to be given to what is eternally
unworthy. Or if that phrase seems to be a bitter one to bear, let us say that
everybody is worthy of love, except him who thinks he is.
The great things of
life are what they seem to be, and for that reason, strange as it may sound to
you, are often difficult to interpret. But the little things of life are
symbols. We receive our bitter lessons most easily through them.
Everyone is worthy of
love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is a sacrament that should be
taken kneeling.
I am completely
penniless, and absolutely homeless. Yet there are worse things in the world
than that.
Every single human
being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every human being should be
the realization of some ideal, either in the mind of God or in the mind of
man.
When you are not on
your pedestal you are not interesting.
while to propose to be
a better man is a piece of unscientific cant, to have become a deeper man is
the privilege of those who have suffered. And such I think I have become.
The aim of Love is to
love: no more, and no less.
What the paradox was
to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of
passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both.
A sentimentalist is
simply one who wants to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.
We think we can have
our emotions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing
emotions have to be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine.
The bond of all
companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.
It was always once
springtime in my heart.
When first I was put
into prison some people advised me to try and forget who I was. It was ruinous
advice. It is only by realizing what I am that I have found comfort of any
kind. Now I am advised by others to try on my release to forget that I have
ever been in a prison at all. I know that would be equally fatal. It would mean
that I would always be haunted by an intolerable sense of disgrace, and that
those things that are meant for me as much as for anybody else - the beauty of
the sun and moon, the pageant of the seasons, the music of daybreak and the
silence of great nights, the rain falling through the leaves, or the dew
creeping over the grass and making it silver - would all be tainted for me, and
lose their healing power, and their power of communicating joy. To regret one's own experiences is to arrest
one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the
lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.
It is only when one
has lost all things, that one knows that one possesses it.
Nothing really at any
period of my life was ever of the smallest importance to me compared with Art.
But in the case of an artist, weakness is nothing less than a crime, when it is
a weakness that paralyses the imagination
It is always twilight
in one’s cell, as it is always twilight in one’s heart. And in the sphere of
thought, no less than in the sphere of time, motion is no more. The thing that
you personally have long ago forgotten, or can easily forget, is happening to
me now, and will happen to me again to-morrow.
He sees all the lovely
influences of life as modes of light: the imagination itself is the world of
light. The world is made by it, and yet the world cannot understand it: that is
because the imagination is simply a manifestation of love, and it is love and
the capacity for it that distinguishes one human being from another.
I would sooner say, or
hear it said of me, that I was so typical a child of my age, that in my
perversity, and for that perversity`s sake, I turned the good things of my life
to evil, and the evil things of my life to good.
One can realize a
thing in a single moment, but one loses it in the long hours that follow with
leaden feet.
I believe I am to have
enough to live on for about eighteen months at any rate, so that, if I may not
write beautiful books, I may at least read beautiful books, and what joy can be
greater?
Suffering is
permanent, obscure, and dark And has the nature of infinity.
I forgot that little
action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and therefore what one has
done in the secret chamber one has someday to cry aloud on the housetops.
I have said to you to speak the truth is a painful
thing. To be forced to tell lies is much worse.
A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks
at it.
Only good questions deserve good answers.
It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much,
and live with her too little.
The supreme vice is shallowness.
We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose
hearts are broken.
Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are
someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
All trials are trials for one’s life, just as all
sentences are sentences of death;
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898) (Excerpts)
(Reading Gaol was the name of the prison where Wilde
was sentenced in 1895 to two years of hard labor following his conviction for
homosexual activities. While he imprisoned, he witnessed the execution by
hanging of a prisoner convicted of murdering his wife, an event which informed
the poem and provided the comparison and contrast between the soldier’s fate
and that of the author).
I
never saw a man who looked
With
such a wistful eye
Upon
that little tent of blue
Which
prisoners call the sky.
Yet
each man kills the thing he loves
By
each let this be heard,
Some
do it with a bitter look,
Some
with a flattering word,
The
coward does it with a kiss,
The
brave man with a sword!
I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.
The vilest deeds like poison weeds
Bloom well in prison air;
It is only what is good in man
That wastes and withers there;
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate
And the Warder is Despair.
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity's machine.
Last
Words: “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do”.
Epitaph (From The Ballad of Reading Gaol).
“And
alien tears will fill for him,
Pity’s
long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And
outcasts always mourn.”
On
Oscar Wilde by Friends and Enemies, Fans and Foes.
Ambrose
Pierce (1882) That sovereign of insufferables, Oscar
Wilde has ensued with his opulence of twaddle and his penury of sense. He has
mounted his hind legs and blown crass vapidities through the bowel of his neck,
to the capital edification of circumjacent fools and foolesses, fooling with
their foolers. He has tossed off the top of his head and uttered himself in
copious overflows of ghastly bosh. The ineffable dunce has nothing to say and
says it—says it with a liberal embellishment of bad delivery, embroidering it
with reasonless vulgarities of attitude, gesture and attire. There never was an
impostor so hateful, a blockhead so stupid, a crank so variously and
offensively daft. Therefore is the she fool enamored of the feel of his tongue
in her ear to tickle her understanding.
The limpid and spiritless vacuity of this
intellectual jellyfish is in ludicrous contrast with the rude but robust mental
activities that he came to quicken and inspire. Not only has he no thoughts,
but no thinker. His lecture is mere verbal ditch-water—meaningless, trite and
without coherence. It lacks even the nastiness that exalts and refines his
verse. Moreover, it is obviously his own; he had not even the energy and
independence to steal it. And so, with a knowledge that would equip an idiot to
dispute with a cast-iron dog, and eloquence to qualify him for the duties of a
caller on a hog-ranch, and an imagination adequate to the conception of a
tom-cat, when fired by contemplation of a fiddle-string, this consummate and
star-like youth, missing everywhere his heaven-appointed functions and offices,
wanders about, posing as a statue of himself, and, like the sun-smitten image
of Memnon, emitting meaningless murmurs in the blaze of women’s eyes.
He makes me tired. And this gawky gowk has the
divine effrontery to link his name with those of Swinburne, Rossetti and
Morris—this dunghill he-hen would fly with eagles. He dares to set his tongue
to the honored name of Keats. He is the leader of a renaissance in
art, this man who cannot draw—of a revival of letters, this man who cannot
write! This little and looniest of a brotherhood of simpletons, whom the wicked
wits of London, haling him dazed from his obscurity, have crowned and crucified
as King of the Cranks, has accepted the distinction in stupid good faith and
our foolish people take him at his word. Mr. Wilde is pinnacled upon a dazzling
eminence but the earth still trembles to the dull thunder of the kicks that set
him up. -
W.H. Auden From the beginning Wilde performed his life and
continued to do so even after fate had taken the plot out of his hands.
Max Beerbohm An Assyrian wax statue, effeminate, but with the
vitality of twenty men.
Jorge Luis Borges Reading and re-reading Wilde throughout the years, I
notice a fact that people who praise him apparently haven't in the very least:
the basic and verifiable fact that Wilde is almost always right.
G. K. Chesterton He was a great artist. He also was really a
charlatan. I mean by a charlatan one sufficiently dignified to despise the
tricks that he employs. … Wilde and his school professed to stand as solitary
artistic souls apart from the public. They professed to scorn the middle class,
and declared that the artist must not work for the bourgeois. The truth is that
no artist so really great ever worked so much for the bourgeois as Oscar Wilde.
No man, so capable of thinking about truth and beauty, ever thought so constantly
about his own effect on the middle classes. … One might go through his swift
and sparkling plays with a red and blue pencil marking two kinds of epigrams;
the real epigram which he wrote to please his own wild intellect, and the sham
epigram which he wrote to thrill the very tamest part of our tame civilization.
-
Rudyard Kipling I've never cared for his work. Too scented.
William Butler Yeats The
dinner table was Wilde's event and made him the greatest talker of his time…
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