Oscar Wilde

Life at times loses its sense of reality; it appears to us like a weird, optical illusion - a phantasmagoric bubble that will disappear at the slightest breath.

Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known

It is simply expression, as Henry says, that gives reality to things.

Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they're better.

Nichts Interessantes ist jemals richtig.

Nay, without thought or conscious desire, might not things external to ourselves vibrate in unison with our moods and passions, atom calling to atom in secret love or strange affinity?

Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.

You will always be loved, and you will always be in love with love. A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do.

The public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities.... A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions--one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true.

Women have no appreciation of good looks-at least, good women have not.

His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion.

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.

The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.

She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.

[Letter to William Ward, 11 July 1878]Dear Boy, Why don__ you write to me? I don__ know what has become of you.As for me I am ruined. The law suit is going against me and I am afraid I will have to pay costs, which means leaving Oxford and doing some horrid work to earn bread. The world is too much for me.However, I have seen Greece and had some golden days of youth. I go back to Oxford immediately for viva voce and then think of rowing up the river to town with Frank Miles. Will you come? YoursOscar

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.

From the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul brain and power.

Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.