The artist is the creator of beautiful things

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

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. That is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art

Those who go beneath the surface do so at their own peril

All art is quite useless

But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face

I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us

Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects

I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves

The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it

There is not doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty

Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies

Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul

Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind, and poisons us

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul

And beauty is a form of genius — is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation

Celebrated novel traces the moral degeneration of a handsome young Londoner from an innocent fop into a cruel and reckless pursuer of pleasure and, ultimately, a murderer. As Dorian Gray sinks into depravity, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait reflects the ravages of crime and sensuality.

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Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish playwright, poet, and author of numerous short stories, and one novel. Known for his biting wit, and a plentitude of aphorisms, he became one of the most successful playwrights of the late Victorian era in London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day. Several of his plays continue to be widely performed, especially The Importance of Being Earnest. As the result of a widely covered series of trials, Wilde suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned for two years hard labour after being convicted of "gross indecency" with other men. After Wilde was released from prison he set sail for Dieppe by the night ferry. He never returned to Ireland or Britain, and died in poverty.

Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray

When things are displaced, they are always on the move until they come to rest where they are meant to be

We are weak, and therefore pity leads us to give help to the needy, aiding them as we should wish to be aided ourselves if we were in like distress

But the arrogance of pride, the pleasures of lust, and the poison of vain curiosity are the impulses of a soul that is dead, not one so dead that it lacks all impulse, but one that is dead because it has forsaken the fountain of life and is swept along by the fleeting things of this world, lending itself to their ways

The man who has spiritual gifts also judges the faithful, approving what he finds to be right and blaming what he finds to be wrong in their deeds and their morals

It is only where it finds this true joy that the soul is nourished

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Confessions of Saint Augustine Book XIII

The poverty of our human intellect generally produced and abundance of words, for more talk is spent in search than in discovery

Mutability, which belongs to all things that are subject to change, comprehends all the forms which those things take when changes occur in them

Without change of movement there is no time, and there can be no change where there is no form

I would rather write in this way than impose a single true meaning so explicitly that it would exclude all others, even though they contained no falsehood that could give me offense

Confessions of Saint Augustine Book XII

But in eternity nothing moves into the past: all is present. Time, on the other hand, is never all present at once. The past is always driven on by the future, the future always follows on the heels of the past, and both the past and the future have their beginning and their end in the eternal present

So we must not say that the past was long, because we shall not be able to find anything in it that could be long, for the simple reason that once it becomes the past it ceases to be

When we describe the past correctly, it is not past facts which are drawn on t of our memories but only words based on our memory-pictures of those facts, because when they happened, they left an impression on our minds, by means of our sense-perception

The future, then, is not yet; it is not at all; and if it is not at all, it cannot possibly be seen. But it can be foretold from things which are present, because they exist now and can therefore be seen

Our use of words is generally inaccurate and seldom completely correct, but our meaning is recognized none the less

The past increases in proportion as the future diminishes, until the future is entirely absorbed and the whole becomes past

So it is not future time that is long, but a long future is a long expectation of the future; and past is not long, because it does not exist, but a long past is a long remembrance of the past

Confessions of Saint Augustine Book XI

As for the other things in life, the more we weep for them, the less they merit our tears, and the fewer tears we shed for them, the more we ought to weep for them

It is simply that the memory captures their images with astonishing speed and stores them away in its wonderful system of compartments, ready to produce them again in just as wonderful a way when we remember them

I can be glad to remember sorrow that is over and done with and sorry to remember happiness that has come to an end

Yet, however it may be, and in whatever inexplicable and incomprehensible way it happens, I am certain that I remember forgetfulness, even though forgetfulness obliterates all that we remember

We do not say that we have found what was lost unless we recognize it, and we cannot recognize it unless we remember it. It was only lost to sight, not to the memory

For we do not entirely forget what we remember that we have forgotten. If we had completely forgotten it, we should not even be able to look for what was lost

The remembrance of past joy makes me sad

No one can say that he has no experience of joy, and this is why he finds it in his memory and recognizes it when he hears the phrase ‘a state of happiness’

For though he may rejoice in his power of endurance, he would prefer that there should be nothing for him to endure

It is curiosity, too, which causes men to turn to sorcery in the effort to obtain knowledge for the same perverted purpsoe

The human tongue is a furnace in which the temper of our souls is daily tried

For our love of praise leads us to court the good opinion of others and hoard it for our personal glorification

Confessions of Saint Augustine Book X

I had set my heart on shadows and followed a lie

Our enemies can often correct our faults by their disparagement, just as the flattery of friends can corrupt us

Let this be a warning, so that none of us may ascribe it to our own doing if we find that others, whose ways we wish to see reformed, are corrected by the words we speak

It was misery to feel myself so weak a victim of these human emotions, although we cannot escape them, since they are the natural lot of mankind, and so I had the added sorrow of being grieved by my own feelings, so that I was tormented by a twofold agony

Confessions of Saint Augustine Book IX

Men even procure for themselves the pleasure of this life by means of pain, not unexpected pain which comes upon them uninvited, but pain which they deliberately induce for themselves

It remained silent and afraid, for as much as the loss of life itself it feared the stanching of the flow of habit, by which it was wasting away to death

I was beside myself with madness that would bring me sanity. I was dying a death that would bring me life. I knew the evil that was in me, but the good that was soon to be born in me I did not know

The mind commands the hand to move and is so readily obeyed that the order can scarcely be distinguished from its execution. Yet the mind is mind and the hand is part of the body. But when the mind commands the mind to make an act of will, these two are one and the same and yet the order is not obeyed

I probed the hidden depths of my soul and wrung its pitiful secrets from it, and when I mustered them all before the eyes of my heart, a great storm broke within me, bringing with it a great deluge of tears

Confessions of Saint Augustine Book VIII

If I did anything against my will, it seemed to me to be something which happened to me rather than something which I did, and I looked upon it not as a fault, but as a punishment

If our fear is unfounded, it is itself an evil, because it stabs and wrongs our hearts for nothing. In fact the evil is all the greater if we are afraid when there is nothing to fear. Therefore, either there is evil and we fear it, or the fear itself is evil

If a man made a great many predictions, several of them would later prove to be true, but he could not know it at the time and would only hit upon them by chance, simply by opening his mouth to speak

It was made clear to me also that even those things which are subject to decay are good

For corruption is harmful, but unless it diminished what is good, it could do no harm. The conclusion then must be either that corruption does no harm — which is not possible; or that everything which is corrupted is deprived of good — which is beyond doubt. But if they are deprived of all good, they will not exist at all

Falsehood is nothing but the supposed existence of something which has no being

For I had no begun to wish to be thought wise. I was full of self-esteem, which was a punishment of my own making

Confessions of Saint Augustine Book VII

My ambitions had placed a load of misery on my shoulders and the further I carried it the heavier it became, but the only purpose of all the efforts we made was to reach the goal of peaceful happiness

I was eaten away with anxiety, but also because he had earned his wine by wishing good day to passers-by while I was trying to feed my pride by telling lies

If, by chance, fortune smiled upon me, I was too disheartened to seize it, for it would take to flight just as my hand was ready to close upon it

Life is a misery and I do not know when death may come

Confessions of Saint Augustine Book VI

Neither did I think that a pleasant face and a gifted tongue were proof of a wise mind

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Confessions of Saint Augustine Book XIII

Confessions of Saint Augustine Book XII

Confessions of Saint Augustine Book XI

Confessions of Saint Augustine Book X

Cassandra