Oscar Wilde Quotes on Beauty (24 Quotes)

But beauty, real beauty, ends where all intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes al nose, 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.

Genius lasts longer than beauty

It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beauty.

There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.

We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful.

When they entered they found, hanging upon the wall, a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognised who it was.

I know, of course, how important it is not to keep a business engagement, if one wants to retain any sense of the beauty of life.

Beauty is a form of geniusis higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, orspringtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon.

She is a peacock in everything but beauty.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better.

I have found that all ugly things are made by those who strive to make something beautiful, and that all beautiful things are made by those who strive to make something useful.

The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms.

Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic -- a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.

A damsel is a genius in the daytime and a beauty at night.

Plain women are always jealous of their husbands. Beautiful women never are. They are always so occupied with being jealous of other women's husbands.

I love London society I think it has immensely improved. It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what Society should be.

Nobody of any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of sunset. Sunsets are quite old fashioned. . . . To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism of temperament. Upon the other hand they go on.

You are young. No hungry generations tread you down.... The past does not mock you with the ruins of a beauty the secret of whose creation you have lost...

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.

The final revelation is that lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of art.

The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful.

Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves.

Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.

She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm.