Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all. — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
Ethics, like natural selection, make existence possible. Aesthetics, like sensual selection, make life lovely and wonderful, fill it with new forms, and… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
“Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.” — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colorless.… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
The mere existence of conscience, that faculty of which people prate so much nowadays, and are so ignorantly proud, is a sign… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
“It is very wrong to kill any one[.]" "Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!” — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
“It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes. Moralists had, as a rule, regarded… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
Individualism has really the higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age. — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
Intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing. — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all. — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
“he had been filled with terror lest other eyes should look upon it. It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
“I am quite incapable of understanding how any work of art can be criticized from a moral standpoint. The sphere of art… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
Though of all poses a moral pose is the most offensive, still to have a pose at all is something. — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature, that… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
Nothing makes one so vain as being told one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all. — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame. — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
Bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
“Basil my dear boy puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
I don't at all like knowing what people say of me behind my back. It makes me far too conceited. — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
“If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find that we are… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
“Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.” — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
Men always want to be a womans first love. Women have a more subtle instinct: What they like is to be a mans last… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
