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Newspapers. . . give us the bald, sordid, disgusting facts of life. They chronicle, with degrading avidity, the sins of the second-rate, and with the conscientiousness of the illiterate give us accurate and prosaic details. . .

Oscar Wilde

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Oscar Wilde
Age: 46 †
Born: 1854
Born: October 16
Died: 1900
Died: November 30
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Playwright
Poet
Prosaist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Dublin city
Oscar O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
Life
Newspapers
Sordid
Details
Chronicles
Rate
Bald
Sin
Degrading
Second
Illiterate
Avidity
Facts
Disgusting
Conscientiousness
Give
Accurate
Prosaic
Giving
Sins
Chronicle

More quotes by Oscar Wilde

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In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.
Oscar Wilde
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In war, the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich makes slaves of the poor.
Oscar Wilde
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Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everybody in good society holds exactly the same opinions.
Oscar Wilde
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The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.
Oscar Wilde
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Many people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honor.
Oscar Wilde
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What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn't know the market place of any single thing.
Oscar Wilde
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She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.
Oscar Wilde
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It is only fair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always apologize to one in private for what they have written against one in public.
Oscar Wilde
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Oh, how I vainly wished to the bearded man in the sky that I was Neapolitan. Why? So I could bring in a fine Neapolitan pest control to help with Queensberry's problem before it gets out of hand.
Oscar Wilde
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He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigraph on his tombstone.
Oscar Wilde
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A daughter is a mother's gender partner, her closest ally in the family confederacy, an extension of herself. -Author Unknown As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
Oscar Wilde
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Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, and creeds follow one another like the withered leaves of Autumn but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons and a possession for all eternity.
Oscar Wilde
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...The two great turning-points of my life were when my father sent to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison.
Oscar Wilde
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Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude.
Oscar Wilde
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If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
Oscar Wilde
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No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.
Oscar Wilde
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What you really are is a Bunburyist. I was quite right in saying you were a Bunburyist. You are one of the most advanced Bunburyists I know.
Oscar Wilde
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Find expression for a sorrow, and it will become dear to you. Find expression for a joy, and you will intensify its ecstasy.
Oscar Wilde
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Just as the orator marks his good things by a dramatic pause, or by raising and lowering his voice, or by gesture, so the writer marks his epigrams with italics, setting the little gem, so to speak, like a jeweler.
Oscar Wilde
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The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not its growth and development.
Oscar Wilde