- - - Ambrose Bierce (about Oscar Wilde, 1882)
Oscar Wilde's talent seems to me to be essentially rootless, something growing in glass on a little water.
- - - George Moore (about Oscar Wilde)
"Do you mind if I smoke?"
- - - Oscar Wilde (to Sarah Bernhardt)
"I don't care if you burn."
- - - Sarah Bernhardt, in reply
NEW:
I don't recognize you - I've changed a lot.
A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.
He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone.
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."
"Why was I born with such contemporaries?"
"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."
"A virtuous abstinence from the joys of pederasty comes most easily to those who have no taste for it."
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong."
"..There were Christians before Christ. For that we should be grateful. The unfortunate thing is that there have been none since."
De Profundis
"I sometimes think that God in creating man, somewhat overestimated His ability."
In
Conversation
"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."
"Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same."
"Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible."
"A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies."
The Picture of Dorian Gray
"Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing."
"When the gods choose to punish us, they merely answer our prayers."
"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing."
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
"The way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it."
"The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on; it is never of any use to oneself."
"The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."
"Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life."
