Oscar Wilde Prison Quotes & Sayings

I think what makes Narnia a magical place is that it offers escapism - escapism from a world that is so different from the reality known by the characters and the reality known by the fans. — Will Poulter

When I say that I am convinced of these things I speak with too much pride. Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the city of God. It is so wonderful that it seems as if a child could reach it in a summer's day. And so a child could. But with me and such as me it is different. One can realise a thing in a single moment, but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet. It is so difficult to keep 'heights that the soul is competent to gain.' We think in eternity, but we move slowly through time; and how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I need not tell again, nor of the weariness and despair that creep back into one's cell, and into the cell of one's heart, with such strange insistence that one has, as it were, to garnish and sweep one's house for their coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter master, or a slave whose slave it is one's chance or choice to be. — Oscar Wilde

For romantic young people like he is, the world always looks best at a distance; and a prison where one's allowed to order one's own dinner is not at all bad. — Oscar Wilde

Every part I get, I just think I'm so lucky. They're so hard to get, you know. — Laurie Metcalf

So he was queer, E.M. Forster. It wasn't his middle name (that would be 'Morgan'), but it was his orientation, his romping pleasure, his half-secret, his romantic passion. In the long-suppressed novel Maurice the title character blurts out his truth, 'I'm an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.' It must have felt that way when Forster came of sexual age in the last years of the 19th century: seriously risky and dangerously blurt-able. The public cry had caught Wilde, exposed and arrested him, broken him in prison. He was one face of anxiety to Forster; his mother was another. As long as she lived (and they lived together until she died, when he was 66), he couldn't let her know. — Michael Levenson

The terror of a child in prison is quite limitless — Oscar Wilde

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be. — Oscar Wilde

But neither milk-white rose nor red
May bloom in prison air;
The shard, the pebble, and the flint,
Are what they give us there:
For flowers have been known to heal
A common man's despair. — Oscar Wilde

For each man kills the thing he loves yet each man does not die
he does not die a death of shame on a day of dark disgrace
nor have a noose about his neck, nor a cloth upon his face
nor drop feet foremost through the floor into an empty space
He does not sit with silent men who watch him night and day
Who watch him when he tries to weep and when he tries to pray
Who watch him lest himself should rob the prison of its prey — Oscar Wilde

She was free in her prison of passion. — Oscar Wilde

It is not the prisoners who need reformation, it is the prisons. — Oscar Wilde

I am happy in my prison of passion — Oscar Wilde

I said excuse me you're a hell of a guy, I mean my my my my you're like pelican fly! — Nicki Minaj

The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realize through that sin his true perfection. — Oscar Wilde

Power is the faculty or capacity to act, the strength and potency to accomplish something. It is the vital energy to make choices and decisions. It also includes the capacity to overcome deeply embedded habits and to cultivate higher, more effective ones. — Stephen Covey

When President George W. Bush cut taxes, he cut them for everyone. — Ari Fleischer

Advocacy without inquiry begets more advocacy. — Peter M. Senge

For a year after that was done to me I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time. That is not such a tragic thing as possibly it sounds to you. To those who are in prison tears are a part of every day's experience. A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not a day on which one's heart is happy. — Oscar Wilde

I still feel that I am in my prime right now but I think my best fights were in my thirties. — Larry Holmes

At six o'clock we cleaned our cells,
At seven all was still,
But the sough and swing of a mighty wing
The prison seemed to fill,
For the Lord of Death with icy breath
Had entered in to kill. — Oscar Wilde

Mary Poppins was very vain and liked to look her best. Indeed, she was quite sure that she never looked anything else. — P.L. Travers

Every prison that men build Is built with bricks of shame, And bound with bars lest Christ should see How men their brothers maim. — Oscar Wilde

The two great turning-points of my life were when my father sent to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison. — Oscar Wilde

I'm a guardian angel. I'm condemned to share the responsibility for my ward's life, and therefore the ultimate course of the progression of the human species. So you see, while I'm here I cannot change my conduct, I cannot choose for myself, and every movement I make sends millions of tiny aftershocks across the present and future of every living human. — E.A.A. Wilson

My opinion of the Russians has changed most drastically in the last week than even (sic) the two-and-a-half years before that. It's only now dawning upon the world the magnitude of the action that the Soviets undertook in invading Afghanistan. — Jimmy Carter

A prison wall was round us both, Two outcast men we were: The world had thrust us from its heart, And God from out His care: And the iron gin that waits for Sin Had caught us in its snare. — Oscar Wilde

I wave to the double-decker buses from my bike, but the passengers never wave back. Why? Am I not an attraction? — David Byrne

My sweet rose, my delicate flower, my lily of lilies, it is perhaps in prison that I am going to test the power of love. I am going to see if I cannot make the bitter warders sweet by the intensity of the love I bear you. I have had moments when I thought it would be wise to separate. Ah! Moments of weakness and madness! Now I see that would have mutilated my life, ruined my art, broken the musical chords which make a perfect soul. Even covered with mud I shall praise you, from the deepest abysses I shall cry to you. In my solitude you will be with me. — Oscar Wilde

If life is a prison, then death is the ultimate freedom. — Debasish Mridha

I tremble with pleasure when I
think that on the very day of my leaving prison both the laburnum and
the lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and that I shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying gold of the one, and make the other toss
the pale purple of its plumes, so that all the air shall be Arabia for me. — Oscar Wilde

Dear Christ! the very prison walls Suddenly seemed to reel, And the sky above my head became Like a casque of scorching steel; And, though I was a soul in pain, My pain I could not feel. — Oscar Wilde

The vilest deeds like poison weeds Bloom well in prison air; It is only what is good in man That wastes and withers there. — Oscar Wilde

Of course, from one point of view, I know that on the day of my release I will merely be moving from one prison into another, and there are times when the whole world seems to be no larger than my cell, and as full of terror for me. Still at the beginning I believe that God made a world for each separate man, and within that world, which is within us, one should seek to live — Oscar Wilde

When in Reading Gaol he told me that the warders in the dock had been gentle and kind, but the visit of the chaplain in his first prison began with these words:
'Mr. Wilde, did you have morning prayers in your house?'
'I am sorry ... I fear not.'
'You see where you are now! — Charles Ricketts

We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments. — Oscar Wilde

She told me of your two chief faults, your vanity, and your being, as she termed it, "all wrong about money". I have a distinct recollection of how I laughed. I had no idea that the first would bring me to prison, and the second to bankruptcy. — Oscar Wilde

Often religious education teaches us to conform and creates a psychological prison which is difficult to escape. — Debasish Mridha

Patriotic is saying, government, you know, you're not always the solution. — Sarah Palin

Some six weeks ago
I was allowed by the doctor to have white bread to eat instead of the coarse
black or brown bread of ordinary prison fare. It is a great delicacy. It will
sound strange that dry bread could possibly be a delicacy to any one. To me
it is so much so that at the close of each meal I carefully eat whatever crumbs
may be left on my tin plate, or have fallen on the rough towel that one uses
as a cloth so as not to soil one's table; and I do so not from hunger - I get
now quite sufficient food - but simply in order that nothing should be
wasted of what is given to me. So one should look on love. — Oscar Wilde