The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Have so much to talk about and feel like saying none of it. XD
But since I have a field trip to NYC tomorrow to see Cage Aux Folles on Broadway starring Kelsey Grammer for French class (quelle bonne chance! 8D), I've FINALLY got some time on my hands and have no idea how to use it.
So I'm gonna do a post I meant to do a good 6 months ago:
OSCAR WILDE QUOTES
I've had random bits and scraps of paper scattered all around my room with these quotes on them, so it's time for some tidying up :D
From De Profundis:
Remember that the sentimentalist is always a cynic at heart. Indeed sentimentality is merely the bank holiday of cynicism.
It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little. (144)
There is no reason why a man should show his life to the world. The world does not understand things. But with people whose affection one desires to have it is different.
...What is said of a man is nothing. The point is, who says it. A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life. (131-132)
Language requires to be tuned, like a violin: and just as too many or too few vibrations in the voice of the singer or the trembling of the string will make the note false, so too much or too little in words will spoil the message. As it stands, at any rate, my letter has its definite meaning behind every phrase. There is in it nothing of rhetoric. Whenever there is erasion or substitution, however slight, however elaborate, it is because I am seeking to render my real impression, to find for my mood its exact equivalent. Whatever is first in feeling comes away last in form. (132-133)
Youth is always extravagant. (133) Which brings us to part 2...
The Picture of Dorian Gray:
...His beauty is such that Art cannot express it. There is nothing that Art cannot express, and I know hat the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best work of my life. ...Unconsciously, he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it all the passion of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek. The harmony of body and soul - how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an identity that is void. (11) Can you say GUHHH
But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose [coughcough PETE], or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think. (3) omg, LOVE this man
It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. ...The thoroughly well-informed man - that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly-educated man is a dreadful thing. (13)
Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions.... He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him...
I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream - I believe that the world would be made up of Pete Townshends and John Lennons gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of medievalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal - something finer, richer, than the Hellenic ideal it may be.
But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. (19)
Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities. (158)
Youth smiles without reason. It is one of its chiefest charms. (180)
Lord Henry's best quotes from The Picture of Dorian Gray
Women try their luck; men risk theirs.
Skepticicm is the beginning of faith.
To define is to limit.
Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular must be a mediocrity.
It is an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world. God, I need to go there before I die <3
Death is the only thing that terrifies me. I hate it. One can survive everything nowadays except that.
Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the 19th century that one cannot explain away.
Anything becomes a plea if one does it too often.
To get back to my youth, I would do anything in the world, except exercise, get up early, or be respectable. Youth! There is nothing like it. It's absurd to talk of the ignorance of youth. Life has revealed to them her latest wonder.
RANDOM QUOTES/ADVICE
The past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.
Bigamy is having one wife too many; monogamy is the same.
Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
There is no sin except stupidity.
:D <3 Peace out, peoples