“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from 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.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“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. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“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.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“What of Art?
-It is a malady.
--Love?
-An Illusion.
--Religion?
-The fashionable substitute for Belief.
--You are a sceptic.
-Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith.
--What are you?
-To define is to limit.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“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.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“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.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“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.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Some things are more precious because they don't last long.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“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?”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is by far the best ending for one.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“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.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“The basis of optimism is sheer terror.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”
― Oscar Wilde, quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde
Born place: in Dublin, Ireland
Born date October 16, 1854
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“That you love him so much the idea of losing him hurts just as immediately and fully as if you'd already lost him?”
― Jennifer Brown, quote from Thousand Words
“And you couldn’t say,
could you, that the touch you had from me
was other than the touch of one
who could love for life—whether we were suited
or not—for life, like a sentence. And now that I
consider, the touch that I had from you
became not the touch of the long view, but like the
tolerant willingness of one
who is passing through.”
― Sharon Olds, quote from Stag's Leap: Poems
“In fact, two-thirds of the uses of the close method in the Java libraries were wrong in 2007.”
― quote from Effective Java Programming Language Guide
“I’m thirteen—and a half.” He looks at me suspiciously. “Weren’t you eleven last”
― Regina Calcaterra, quote from Etched in Sand: A True Story of Five Siblings Who Survived an Unspeakable Childhood on Long Island
“Your name is Do Kyungsoo. You have short-term memory loss, antesomething amnesia, so you won’t remember what happened last night. But let me help you out.
Last night I put my head on this pillow and my arms around your waist. My name’s Kim Jongin. I call you hyung. Yesterday you loved me. Today you’ll love me again.
This is where you undressed me.
This is where I undressed you.
And here I pushed you up against the wall and kissed you really hard (approximately, it was kind of dark) and we thought we should have sex.
Here you sat, dangling your legs. I put my palm on your kneecap and you bent forward and kissed me first.
We talked about ballet. You hummed a tune and my fingers did an arabresque here, grand jeté onto the floor, fouetté en tourant and then sissonne on the back of your hand. Pas de valse fast up your arm and you smiled.
I leaned on this and read your green sticky notes while you went around cleaning up invisible messes. It came to me that all the green looks like grass, and grass is boring without daisies. So I hope you like yellow?
And here’s Kim Jongin. Say hello to me?”
― quote from Anterograde Tomorrow
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Alcatraz Versus the...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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