Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories Quotes

“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“The proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“I am not at all cynical, I have merely got experience, which, however, is very much the same thing. ”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“If a woman cannot make her mistakes charming, she is only a female.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the priviledge of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor shall be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“The world is a stage, but the play is badly written.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“The proper basis for marriage is mutual misunderstanding. The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married. One should always be in love - that's the reason one should never marry.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“Comfort is the only thing our civilisation can give us.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime

“I'm really very sorry, but it is not my fault. People are so annoying. All my pianists look exactly like poets, and all my poets look exactly like pianists”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with grasses waving up above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace. 'You can help me. You can open for me the portals of Death's house, for Love is always with you, and Love is stronger than Death is.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“He had that rarest of all things, common sense.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“Nichts Interessantes ist jemals richtig.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“People are so annoying. All my pianists look exactly like poets; and all my poets look exactly like pianists.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime

“And yet it was not the mystery, but the comedy of suffering that struck him; its absolute uselessness, its grotesque want of meaning. How incoherent everything seemed! How lacking in all harmony! He was amazed at the discord between the shallow optimism of the day, and the real facts of existence. He was still very young.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime

“Wenn eine Frau ihre Fehler nicht charmant begehen kann, ist sie nichts als ein Weib.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“How mad and monstrous it all seemed! Could it be that written on his hand, in characters that he could not read himself, but that another could decipher, was some fearful secret of sin, some blood-red sign of crime? Was there no escape possible? Were we no better than chessmen, moved by an unseen power, vessels the potter fashions at his fancy, for honour or for shame? His reason revolted against it, and yet he felt that some tragedy was hanging over him, and that he had been suddenly called upon to bear an intolerable burden. Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but
the play is badly cast.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“How mad and monstrous it all seemed! Could it be that written on his hand, in characters that he could not read himself, but that another could decipher, was some fearful secret of sin, some blood-red sign of crime? Was there no escape possible? Were we no better than chessmen, moved by an unseen power, vessels the potter fashions at his fancy, for honour or for shame? His reason revolted against it, and yet he felt that some tragedy was hanging over him, and that he had been suddenly called upon to bear an intolerable burden. Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“A strange pity came over him. Were these children of sin and misery predestined to their ends, as he to his? Were they, like him, merely the puppets of a monstrous show?”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime

“Every one should have their hands told once a month so as to know what not to do. Of course, one does it all the same, but it is so pleasant to be warned.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“Early in life she had discovered the important truth that nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion; and by a series of reckless escapades, half of them quite harmless, she had acquired all the privileges of a personality.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“No one cares about distant relatives nowadays. They went out of fashion years ago.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“Lo que es interesante nunca es correcto.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“How mad and monstrous it all seemed! Could it be that written on his hand, in
characters that he could not read himself, but that another could decipher, was some
fearful secret of sin, some blood-red sign of crime? Was there no escape possible?
Were we no better than chessmen, moved by an unseen power, vessels the potter
fashions at his fancy, for honour or for shame? His reason revolted against it, and yet
he felt that some tragedy was hanging over him, and that he had been suddenly called
upon to bear an intolerable burden. Actors are so fortunate. They can choose
whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make
merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are
forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play
Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but
the play is badly cast.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“There was something in the dawn’s delicate loveliness that seemed to him inexpressibly pathetic, and he thought of all the days that break in beauty, and that set in storm. These rustics, too, with their rough, good-humoured voices, and their nonchalant ways, what a strange London they saw! A London free from the sin of night and the smoke of day, a pallid, ghost-like city, a desolate town of tombs! He wondered what they thought of it, and whether they knew anything of its splendour and its shame, of its fierce, fiery-coloured joys, and its horrible hunger, of all it makes and mars from morn to eve.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

“Los actores son muy afortunados. Pueden escoger entre trabajar en una tragedia o en una comedia, entre sufrir o divertirse, entre reír o derramar lágrimas. Pero en la vida real es diferente. La mayoría de los hombres y mujeres se ven obligados a representar papeles que no les gustan (...) El mundo es un escenario, pero la obra no tiene los papeles bien distribuidos".”
― Oscar Wilde, El crimen de Lord Arthur Savile y otros relatos

“The proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding. No, I am not at all cynical, I have merely got experience, which, however, is very much the same thing.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime

“The sound of his own voice made him shudder, yet he almost hoped that Echo might hear him, and wake the slumbering city from its dreams.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime

“The night was bitter cold, and the gas-lamps round the square flared and flickered in the keen wind; but his hands were hot with fever, and his forehead burned like fire.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime

“After some time, twelve o'clock boomed from the tall tower at Westminster, and yet at each stroke of the sonorous bell the night seemed to tremble.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime