Oscar Wilde · 462 pages
Rating: (51.5K votes)
“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
“Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. . .”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
“I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
“It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don't mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind. -Algernon”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
“Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
“Well, I don't like your clothes. You look perfectly ridiculous in them. Why on earth don't you go up and change? It's perfectly childish to be in mourning for a man who is actually staying a whole week with you in your house as a guest. I call it grotesque.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
“Miss Prism: Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days.
Cecily: Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you are! I hope it did not end happily? I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.
Miss Prism: The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
“there are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely - or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
“To shut one's eyes to half of life that one may live securely is as though one blinded oneself that one might walk with more safety in a land of pit and precipice.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
“Do you really keep a diary? I'd give anything to look at it. May I?
Oh, no. You see, it is simply a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form I hope you will order a copy.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
“I have come up to town expressly to propose to her.
Algernon. I thought you had come up for pleasure? . . . I call that business.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
“In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
“JACK: Apoplexy will do perfectly well, Lots of people die of apoplexy, quite suddenly, don't they?
ALGERNON: Yes, but it's hereditary, my dear fellow. It's a sort of thing that runs in families.
JACK: Good heavens! Then I certainly won't choose that. What can I say?
ALGERNON: Oh! Say influenza.
JACK Oh, no! that wouldn't sound probable at all. Far too many people have had it.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
“My dear boy, I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all. 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.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
Oscar Wilde
Born place: in Dublin, Ireland
Born date October 16, 1854
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“…in that moment, as he saw and smelled how irresistible its effect was and how with lightning speed it spread and made captives of the people all around him—in that moment his whole disgust for humankind rose up again within him and completely soured his triumph, so that he felt not only no joy, but not even the least bit of satisfaction. What he had always longed for—that other people should love him—became at the moment of his achievement unbearable, because he did not love them himself, he hated them. And suddenly he knew that he had never found gratification in love, but always only in hatred—in hating and in being hated.”
― Patrick Süskind, quote from Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
“Our thoughts are clay, they are moulded with the changes of the days;--when we are resting they are good; under fire, they are dead. Fields of craters within and without.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, quote from All Quiet on the Western Front
“We can't..." he told me.
"I know," I agreed.
Then his mouth was on mine again, and this time, I knew there would be no turning back. There were no walls this time. Our bodies wrapped together as he tried to get my coat off, then his shirt, then my shirt. ... It really was a lot like when we'd fought out on the quad earlier-that same passion and heat. I think at the end of the day, the instincts that power fighting and sex aren't so different. They all come from an animal side of us.
Yet, as more and more clothes came off, it went beyond just animal passion. It was sweet and wonderful at the same time. When I looked into his eyes, I could see without a doubt that he loved me more than anyone else in the world, that I was his salvation, the same way that he was mine. I'd never expected my first time to be in a cabin in the woods, but I realized the place didn't matter. The person did. With someone you loved, you could be anywhere, and it would be incredible. Being in the most luxurious bed in the world wouldn't matter if you were with someone you didn't love.”
― Richelle Mead, quote from Shadow Kiss
“Well, sir, if things are real, they’re there all the time."
"Are they?" said the Professor; and Peter did not quite know what to say.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
“I held her close to me with my eyes closed, wonering if anything in my life had ever been this perfect and knowing at the same time that it hadn't. I was in love, and the feeling was even more wonderful than I ever imagined it could be.”
― Nicholas Sparks, quote from A Walk to Remember
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