Oscar Wilde

“Requiescat Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow. All her bright golden hair Tarnished with rust, She that was young and fair Fallen to dust....”

“To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honor”

“I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare’s plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I...”

“The mimicry of passion is the most intolerable of all poses.”

“With slouch and swing around the ring We trod the Fools’ Parade! We did not care: we knew we were The Devils’ Own Brigade: And shaven head and feet of lead Make a merry masquerade.”

“Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.”

“Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.”

“For he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die.”

“My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.”

“It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free.”

“I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that when one loses o...”

“A flower blossoms for its own joy.”

“Pleasure is the only thing one should live for, nothing ages like happiness.”

“The only horrible thing in the world is ennui.”

“The proper basis for marriage is mutual misunderstanding. The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married. One should always be in love - that's the reason one should...”

“I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream - I believe that the world w...”

“So much had been surrendered! And to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear and whose result was a...”

“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.”

“Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.”

“When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.”