Wilde's famous sentence

[Appreciation] Oscar Wilde: Selected Proverbs

Women should be loved, not understood.

Crying is the harbor of ordinary women, but it is the grave of beautiful women.

If you like roses, don't put them under a microscope.

Life experience is a nice name for everyone to make mistakes they make.

Why do you always talk about life trivially? Because I think life is so important, I can't really talk about it.

People who love each other should always love each other. So they shouldn't get married.

Marriage is based on mutual misunderstanding.

I'm not in favor of long-term dating, it gives people the opportunity to learn about each other's personality before marriage, which I don't think is advisable.

In order for romance to last forever in memory, love must be allowed to fade in the present.

There are three kinds of worldly things: good things, bad things you can do, and bad things you can't do. If you insist on doing good, you will be respected by good people. If you insist on doing bad things, you will be respected by bad people. But if you do something bad that no one can do, then good people and bad people will respect you, and you will really be lost.

If anyone can sort out the "100 Bad Books of Mankind" and include it in the education system, that is really a gospel for contemporary teenagers.

- Echoes tend to be more beautiful than the originals.

Only when we learn to love forgetting can we learn the art of living.

All art is representations and symbols.

The only thing worth saying is the things that make us forget, just as the only thing worth doing is to surprise the world.

People teach others to hide their ignorance, just as people smile to hide their tears.

Ordinary wealth can be stolen from people, but real wealth cannot. In your treasure trove of souls, there are infinite treasures that cannot be taken away from you.

Now, the author of the memoir is either completely amnesiac or has never done anything worth remembering.

In the past, we used to sage heroes. Now we often vulgarize heroes. Cheap versions of masterpieces may be pleasant, but cheap versions of great men are absolutely abominable.

In the age of artistic prosperity, critics did not exist.

Newspapers and periodicals are not worth reading, and literature is not loved, and this is the difference between them all.

No poet sings because he has to sing, and no poet sings because he wants to sing.

Without style, there is no art; without the whole, there is no style; and without the individual, there is no whole.

Our only responsibility to history is to rewrite it.

• Man is only a puppet when he acts on his own, and a poet in depicting the actions of others.

Without art, there is no criticism, and the supreme meaning of criticism lies precisely in the creativity of criticism.

The essence of the most advanced literary criticism is the recording of one's own soul.

Critics never reproduce the work he wants to criticize at a glance, and part of the charm of criticism lies in giving up similarity.

The body is the soul, not only in art, but in all corners of life, and form is the beginning of all things.

For the great musician, there is only one way of composing— his own way of composing; for the great painter, there is only one way of painting — his own way.

- According to the worldly standards of good and evil, it is very easy to do good.

There is no universal truth in art, and in art, error is also truth.

The masses are very tolerant, they forgive everything except not for the genius.

The world is full of absurd orthodoxy, but few are strong enough to resist it.

She wore too much makeup and too little clothes last night. This is a sign of women's despair.

Innocent country life is like this: people go to bed early and get up early, get up early because there are too many things to do, and go to bed early because there are not too many things to think about.

Every experience is of unique value, and no matter how much one opposes marriage, it is certainly a valuable experience.

I never talk when I'm listening to music, at least when I'm listening to good music. If you hear bad music, then you have a responsibility to drown it out in the conversation.

When critics disagree, the artist expresses himself.

As far as I know, faith is the most pluralistic thing. We should all believe in the same thing in different ways. It's like eating on the same plate with different spoons.

Feelings are the details that make up our life story.

I didn't know what horror was before, but I don't know it now. Terror is like a cold hand on another person's heart.

Responsibility is like a terrible disease.

The only difference between capriciousness and consistency is that capriciousness lasts longer.

Now that people know the price of anything, they know nothing about anything itself.

Kindness and cowardice are actually the same thing. Kindness is the trademark of cowardice in this company.

When art becomes more diverse, nature will undoubtedly become more diverse.

I'm the only person in the world I want to know thoroughly, but for now, I don't see any chance of success.

Man always does the stupidest thing with the noblest motives.

Nothing can do a fatal toll on personality more than deliberation.

The beauty of marriage is that it makes cheating an important part of life for both partners.

Mankind will always love Rousseau because he confessed his crimes not only to his close friends, but to the whole world.

When it comes to "believing," there's a paradox that I can trust anything, as long as I believe it's unbelievable.

The gates of the ancient world read "Know thyself." At the gates of the new world, you should write "Be Yourself."

Jesus' message was simple: "Be yourself." "This is the secret of Christianity.

Nothing is more beautiful than forgetting.

London is full of smog and serious people. I don't know if it was the smog that gave birth to a canon, or whether it was a canon that caused the smog.

The value of an opinion does not depend on whether it is expressed in good faith.

The goal of life is to develop ourselves and fully understand our own nature, which is the purpose of each of us to come into this world.

- To know the vintage and quality of the wine, you don't have to drink the whole barrel of wine.

Now every great man has his own disciples, but it is always Judas who writes biographies of great men.

- There is a tragic element behind every beautiful thing. The world must be in pain for the most beautiful flowers to bloom.

The only way to get rid of temptation is to give in to temptation.

- It is not too much for a person to be cautious in choosing an opponent.

Socialism is very valuable because it leads to true individualism.

The individualism of the future needs to develop through happiness.

There is only one class in society that values money more than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can't think of anything other than money. This is the real suffering of the poor.

Talking about one thing is much more difficult than doing one. In real life, of course, this is obvious. Anyone can make history, and only great men can write history.

One should absorb the colours of life, but never remember its details. The details are always vulgar.

If a person doesn't talk about something, it never happens. Only expression can make things real.

Only when people are detached from life can they become bystanders of life.

Shallow people need to get rid of negative emotions over the years. A man who can dominate himself can easily end his grief, just as he can easily create joy.

Dissatisfaction is the first sign of personal or national progress.

The property of a married woman is her husband. This is the true definition of married women's property.

When a person expresses it sincerely in his own way, what he says must be a lie. Give him a mask and he'll tell you the truth.

I love simple pleasures, which are the last refuge in a complex world.

Beauty means as much as human emotions.

The real tragedies of life often occur in such a way that they are devoid of any character and hurt us with crude violence, absolute incoherence, meaningless absurdity.

Love begins with deceiving oneself and ends with deceiving others. This is what the world means by "romantic".

Doing nothing is the most difficult and intelligent thing in the world.

To know yourself, you must know everything about others.

A man who pays lip service to the point that life has exhausted him is certainly not really exhausted.

One can always know immediately whether a man is married or not– just pay attention to whether there is often a very sad look in the eyes of the man.

To be a good person is to live in harmony with yourself.

There are no secrets in life. Life has a goal, which is to always look for temptations.

There are two ways not to love art, one is not to love art, and the other is to love art rationally.

Being in society is boring, and being out of society is a tragedy.

We live in a time when unnecessary things become our only necessity.

Society tends to forgive criminals, but never dreamsians.

It's easy to empathize with suffering, but it's hard to empathize with thought.

Only two kinds of people are truly fascinating, the first is omniscient and the second is ignorant.

People are always unusually friendly to people who don't care at all.

I like promising men and women with stories.

As some witty French say, women inspire our desire to make masterpieces and always prevent us from actually completing them.

One can resist everything except temptation.

Trying to change anyone is dangerous.

There can be no friendship between men and women. There may be passion, hostility, adoration, and admiration between them, but there is absolutely no friendship.

For a person, it is a terrible thing to suddenly find that he has only told the truth all his life.

The essence of thought and the essence of life are growth.

When we contradict ourselves, we are the most real.

Most people are ruined by unhealthy and exaggerated altruism.

From an artistic point of view, one of the most important things in life is to never repeat the mistakes of the past.

We teach people how to memorize knowledge, but we never teach them how to grow.

It is absurd to divide people into good people and bad people. We just need to distinguish between interesting and boring people.

Only fashion becomes obsolete.

For philosophers, women represent the triumph of matter over spirit, just as men represent the triumph of thought over morality.

The only terrible thing in the world is "boredom," which is an unforgivable sin.

- The work of art should dominate the viewer, not the viewer.

One should open one's feelings about the joy, beauty, and color of life.

People who love only once in a lifetime are actually superficial people. What they call loyalty and chastity, I call habitual indifference or lack of imagination.

- Everyone is a monster. The only thing you can do is feed these monsters in your body.

Today it is not repentance that comforts people, but pleasure. Repentance is outdated.

Man's perfection is not in what he has, but in what kind of person he is.

Noble moral sentiments do not contribute much to a person's health and happiness.

I've always believed that a man who wants to get married should either know everything or know nothing.

A lasting income is more valuable than a charming personality.

- Philanthropy creates many evils.

The answer is sometimes flippant, but the question is never flippant.

Great love and sorrow will be destroyed by their own abundance. Only shallow sorrow and shallow love will last forever.

Source: Wilde's Selected Writings: Mirrors, Lies and Moments Geng Hongming Translation Life, Reading, And New Knowledge Triptych Bookstore, September 2021