Reading Oscar Wilde Quotes & Sayings

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

You talk books away," he said; "why don't you write one?" "I am too fond of reading books to care to write them, Mr. Erskine. I should like to write a novel certainly, a novel that would be as lovely as a Persian carpet and as unreal. — Oscar Wilde

I am too fond of reading books to care to write them. — Oscar Wilde

Yes, we shall win in the end; but the road will be long and red with monstrous martyrdoms. Oscar Wilde, 1897, on his release from Reading Gaol — Mark Simpson

I have a weird graphic I made for myself once, and it's the "lineage tree" of everyone that has inspired me and more importantly given me the permission to be myself in my work. There's a slew of people from theater: Erwin Piscator, Chekhov, Mac Wellman, Stein; and then a whole lot of wonderful works that are called novels: everything from Tristram Shandy to Bouvard and Pecuchet, to Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas, and Finnegan's Wake and Invisible Man, and then contemporary writers I'm currently reading like Renee Gladman and Anakana Schofield. There are many more in my graphic also: there's Beckett's novels and Melancholy of Resistance, and there's Reznikoff and Dos Passos, there are contemporary poets I admire like Jena Osman, dance-writers like Michelle Ellsworth, and books I can't help read for fun like Muriel Spark. But there's Groucho Marx and Oscar Wilde. It's a huge question and the answers would likely change daily. But these I'm talking about here are in the pantheon. — Thalia Field

Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read. — 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

I write to make things death can't steal. — Jeff Zentner

If a book isn't worth reading over and over again, it isn't worth reading at all. — Oscar Wilde

Wilhelmine Germany was hostile to the expression of same-sex love - and, of course, Mann would have known of the fate of Oscar Wilde. His early reading of Platen's poetry, and, probably when he was in his early twenties, of Platen's diaries, introduced him to a form of sexual expression he found profoundly congenial. It's not quite Platonic. — Philip Kitcher

gone from Josephine to Cinderella. Except, while Cinderella had evil stepsisters and one fairy godmother, I had Martin and fifteen bitchy birds flitting around me. — R.S. Grey

What you read when you don't have to ... — Oscar Wilde

The distinction between investment and speculation in common stocks has always been a useful one and its disappearance is cause for concern. — Benjamin Graham

The flame of testimony burns brightly when fed with the oil of grace. — H. A Ironside

Are we to deny our daughters the works of Oscar Wilde, Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck or Shakespeare?....Where is the equality in banning girls from enjoying wonderful works of literature?....What kind of society defines suitable reading material by sex? This is indefensible censorship encouraging ignorance and bias. [About Caitlin Moran's statement.] — Diane Davies

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. — Oscar Wilde

And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!"
Ballad of Reading Gaol, 1898 — Oscar Wilde

Here we are, condemned to death, and still the certainty of dying cannot compare with the pleasure I am feeling. The joy I take from this half an orange which I am holding in my hand is one of the greatest joys I have ever known. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it. — Oscar Wilde

Women are attracted to silent men. They believe they are listening. — Thomas Hardy

On the environment and climate change, I suspect that future generations will think there was too much timidity, too much fear of upsetting business. Basically, New Labour was very nervous about regulating business, or requiring it to do anything, even when there was a very clear social or environmental case for doing so. — Geoff Mulgan

Ah! Happy they whose hearts can break
And peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his path
And cleanse his soul from sin?
How else but through a broken heart
May the Lord Christ enter in? — Oscar Wilde

Am reading more of Oscar Wilde. What a tiresome, affected sod. — Noel Coward

It is hard to speak of sex without being clinical, brutal, or romantic. — Mason Cooley

I still have a desire to do some sketch comedy. My dream is to be on 'SNL,' to host 'SNL.' — Selenis Leyva

Oscar Wilde said that "All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime," and then got sent off to Reading Gaol to reconsider and write ballads. — Mark Forsyth

Reading the very best writers - let us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy - is not going to make us better citizens. Art is perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who was right about everything. He also told us that all bad poetry is sincere. Had I the power to do so, I would command that these words be engraved above every gate at every university, so that each student might ponder the splendor of the insight. — Harold Bloom

Before I met Maria, I was your basic craven hermit. I spent most of my time in my room, in love with my walls, hiding out from the world with my
fanzines and my records. I thought I was happier that way. I had developed these monastic habits to protect myself from something, probably, but
whatever it was, the monastic habits had turned into the bigger problem. In my headphones, I led a life of romance and incident and intrigue, none
of which had anything to do with the world outside my Walkman. I was an English major, obsessed with Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater and Algernon
Swinburne, thrilling to the exploits of my decadent aesthete poet idols, even though my only experience with decadence was reading about it. — Rob Sheffield

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

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all. — Oscar Wilde

One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. — Oscar Wilde