Oscar Wilde Quotes
Pardon me, you are not engaged to any one. When you do become engaged to some one, I, or your father, should his health permit him, will inform you of the fact. An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be. It is hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself.
Feast of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, Martyr, 1170
Come down, O Christ, and help me! reach Thy hand
For I am drowning in a stormier sea
Than Simon on the the lake of Galilee:
The wine of life is spilt upon the sand,
My heart is as some famine-murdered land
Whence all good things have perished utterly,
And well I know my soul in Hell must lie
If I this night before God's throne must stand.
He sleeps perchance, or rideth to the chase,
Like Baal, when his prophets holed that name
From morn to noon on Carmel's smitten height.
Nay, peace! I shall behold, before the night,
The feet of brass, the robe more white than flame,
The wounded hands, the weary human face.
And thus we rust Life's iron chain
Degraded and alone:
And some men curse, and some men weep,
And some men make
no moan:
But God's eternal Laws are kind
And break the heart
of stone.
And every human heart that breaks,
In prison-cell or
yard,
Is as that broken box that gave
Its treasure to the
Lord,
And filled the unclean leper's house
With the scent of
costliest nard.
Ah! happy they whose hearts can break
And peace of pardon
win!
How else may man make straight his plan
And cleanse his soul
from sin?
How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter
in?
Who is that man over there? I don't know him. What is he doing? Is he a conspirator? Have you searched him? Give him till tomorrow to confess, then hang him! -- hang him!
Pale was it, at first, as the mist that hangs over the river pale as the feet of the morning, and silver as the wings of the dawn. As the shadow of a white rose in a mirror of silver, as the shadow of a rose in a water-pool, so was the rose that blossomed on the topmost spray of the Tree.
As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk about.
It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist -- the problem is entirely the same in both cases. To know exactly how much oil one must put with one's vinegar.
Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic -- a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.