The Wit and Wisdom of Oscar Wilde Read online

  … women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the two sexes.

  —Mrs. Cheveley, An Ideal Husband, Act 3

  All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

  —Algernon, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 1

  Women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders.

  —The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 5

  … don’t be led astray into the paths of virtue. Reformed, you would be perfectly tedious. That is the worst of women. They always want one to be good. And if we are good, when they meet us, they don’t love us at all. They like to find us quite irretrievably bad, and to leave us quite unattractively good.

  —Cecil Graham, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Act 3

  “… the only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.”

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 8

  “Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.”

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 15

  “Being adored is a nuisance. Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. They worship us, and are always bothering us to do something for them.”

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 6

  Why can’t you women love us, faults and all? Why do you place us on monstrous pedestals? We have all feet of clay, women as well as men: but when we men love women, we love them knowing their weaknesses, their follies, their imperfections, love them all the more, it may be, for that reason. It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love.

  —Sir Robert Chiltern, An Ideal Husband, Act 2

  If a woman wants to hold a man, she has merely to appeal to what is worst in him.

  —Lady Windermere, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Act 3

  Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.

  —Lord Darlington, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Act 2

  Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.

  —Lord Goring, An Ideal Husband, Act 2

  “I like men who have a future and women who have a past.”

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 15

  Most women in London, nowadays, seem to furnish their rooms with nothing but orchids, foreigners, and French novels.

  —Lady Hunstanton, A Woman of No Importance, Act 4

  LADY STUTFIELD: Ah! The world was made for men and not women.

  MRS. ALLONBY: Oh, don’t say that, Lady Stutfield. We have a much better time than they have. There are far more things forbidden to us than are forbidden to them.

  —A Woman of No Importance, Act 1

  Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones.

  —Duchess of Berwick, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Act 1

  … men can love what is beneath them—things unworthy, stained, dishonoured. We women worship when we love; and when we lose our worship, we lose everything.

  —Lady Chiltern, An Ideal Husband, Act 1

  I am disgraced: he is not. That is all. It is the usual history of a man and a woman as it usually happens, as it always happens. And the ending is the ordinary ending. The woman suffers. The man goes free.

  —Mrs. Arbuthnot, A Woman of No Importance, Act 4

  LADY WINDERMERE: Are all men bad?

  DUCHESS OF HERWICK: Oh, all of them, my dear, all of them without exception. And they never grow any better. Men become old, but they never become good.

  —Lady Windermere’s Fan, A ct 1

  We make gods of men and they leave us. Others make brutes of them and they fawn and are faithful.

  —Lady Windermere, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Act 3

  “How fond women are of doing dangerous things! … It is one of the qualities in them that I admire most. A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.”

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 18

  LORD ILLINGWORTH: We men know life too early.

  MRS. ARBUTHNOT: And we women know life too late. That is the difference between men and women.

  —A Woman of No Importance, Act 4

  Chapter 3

  DEFINITIONS

  Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.

  —“A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated”

  Action! What is action? It dies at the moment of its energy. It is a base concession to fact. The world is made by the singer for the dreamer.

  —Gilbert, The Critic as Artist, Part 1

  “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 for ever. 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.”

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 2

  Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods. Beauty is the symbol of symbols. Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses nothing.

  —Gilbert, The Critic as Artist, Part 1

  “… beauty is a form of genius—is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation.”

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 2

  “A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied.”

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 6

  … consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

  —“The Relation of Dress to Art:

  A Note in Black and White on Mr. Whistler’s Lecture”

  The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

  —The Picture of Dorian Gray, Preface

  CECIL GRAHAM: What is a cynic?

  LORD DARLINGTON: A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

  —Lady Windermere’s Fan, Act 3

  Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

  —Lord Illingworth, A Woman of No Importance, Act 2

  Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.

  —“The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  … duty is what one expects from others, it is not what one does oneself.

  —Lord Illingworth, A Woman of No Importance, Act 2

  Our most fiery moments of ecstasy are merely shadows of what somewhere else we have felt, or of what we long some day to feel.

  —Letter [c. January–February, 1886]

  Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

  —Dumby, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Act 3

  “Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect—simply a confession of failure.”

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 4

  We are dominated by the fanatic, whose worst vice is his sincerity. Anything approaching to the free play of the mind is practically unknown amongst us. People cry out against the sinner, yet it is not the sinful, but the stupid, who are our shame. There is no sin except stupidity.

  —Gilbert, The Critic as Artist, Part 2

  Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.

  —Lord Goring, An Ideal Husband, Act 3

  “What a fuss people make about fidelity! … Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say.”

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of
Dorian Gray, Ch. 2

  CECILY: Miss Prism says that all good looks are a snare.

  ALGERNON: They are a snare that every sensible man would like to be caught in.

  —The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 2

  … one knows so well the popular idea of health. The English country gentleman galloping after a fox—the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.

  —Lord Illingworth, A Woman of No Importance, Act 1

  An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

  —Gilbert, The Critic as Artist, Part 2

  Ignorance is like a delicate, exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.

  —Lady Bracknell, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 1

  “You like everyone; that is to say, you are indifferent to everyone.”

  —Basil Hallward, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 1

  The public dislike novelty because they are afraid of it. It represents to them a mode of Individualism, an assertion on the part of the artist that he selects his own subject, and treats it as he chooses. The public are quite right in their attitude. Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.

  —“The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  … all influence is bad, but … a good influence is the worst in the world.

  —Mrs. Allonby, A Woman of No Importance, Act 4

  “All influence is immoral—immoral from the scientific point of view.”

  “Why?”

  “Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.”

  —Lord Henry and Dorian Gray, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 2

  … there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.

  —Gilbert, The Critic as Artist, Part 2

  Life! Life! Don’t let us go to life for our fulfillment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic and critical temperament. It makes us pay too high a price for its wares, and we purchase the meanest of its secrets at a cost that is monstrous and infinite.

  —Gilbert, The Critic as Artist, Part 2

  “What a silly thing love is! It is not half as useful as logic, for it is always telling one things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true.”

  —The Student, “The Nightingale and the Rose”

  “I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.”

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 2

  Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton. Nothing succeeds like excess.

  —Lord Illingworth, A Woman of No Importance, Act 3

  Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

  —Mrs. Cheveley, An Ideal Husband, Act 2

  “As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.”

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 18

  … Philistinism being simply that side of man’s nature that is not illumined by the imagination.

  —De Profundis

  “… anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often.”

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 19

  The gift of prophecy is given to all who do not know what is going to happen to themselves.

  —Letter [c. May 28, 1897]

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

  —Mrs. Erlynne, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Act 4

  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.

  —Lady Bracknell, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 1

  “Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art. Besides, 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 in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.”

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 17

  “Resolute government”—that shallow shibboleth of those who do not understand how complex a thing the art of government is.

  —“Mr. Froudes Blue Book”

  LORD WINDERMERE: What is the difference between scandal and gossip?

  CECIL GRAHAM: Oh! gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

  —Lady Windermere’s Fan, Act 3

  Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking other people to live as one wishes to live.

  —“The Soul of Man under Socialism”

  … a sentimentalist confronted with a fact either in Life or Art is a tragic spectacle to gods and men.

  —Letter [June 13, 1897]

  What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colourless. By its curiosity, Sin increases the experience of the race. Through its intensified assertion of individualism it saves us from monotony of type. In its rejection of the current notions about morality, it is one with the higher ethics!

  —Gilbert, The Critic as Artist, Part 1

  “Skepticism is the beginning of faith.”

  —Dorian Gray, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 17

  Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching.

  —“The Decay of Lying”

  The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility.

  —Algernon, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act 1

  It is only about things that do not interest one that one can give a really unbiased opinion, which is, no doubt, the reason why an unbiased opinion is always absolutely valueless. The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all.

  —Gilbert, The Critic as Artist, Part 2

  “Vanity—the invulnerable breastplate of man.”

  —Wilde as quoted by Wilfred Hugh Chesson, “A Reminiscence of 1898” [POW]

  “The thoroughly well-informed man—that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.”

  —Lord Henry, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 1

  Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.

  —“Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young”

  Chapter 4

  ART WITH A CAPITAL A

  “… every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.”

  —Basil Hallward, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 1

  To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.

  —The Picture of Dorian Gray, Preface

&n
bsp; The aim of art is no more to give pleasure than to give pain.

  —“Mr. Oscar Wilde on Mr. Oscar Wilde: An Interview”

  You asked me about Degas. Well, he loves to be thought young, so I don’t think he would tell his age. His disbelieves in art-education, so I don’t think he will name a Master. He despises what he cannot get, so I am sure he will not give any information about prizes or honours. Why say anything about his person? His pastels are himself.

  —Letter [c. February 12, 1894]

  Mr. Whistler always spelt art, and we believe still spells it, with a capital “I.”

  —“The New President”

  “What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away.