Oscar Wilde on Love

"You have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvelous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid"

"My life-my whole life- take it, and do with it what you will. I love you-love you as I have never loved any living thing. From the moment I met you I loved you, loved you blindly, adoringly,madly!You didn't know it then-you know it now."

"It takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it. And even more courage to see it in the one you love"

"The very essence of romance is uncertainty."

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."

"Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary."

"When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy."

"A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her."

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

"All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon."

"Lo! with a little rod I did but touch the honey of romance — And must I lose a soul's inheritance?"

"Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship."

"Oh, I love London society! It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what society should be."

"The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty and to someone else if she is plain."

"To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance."

"We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken."

"I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lip."

"Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring."

"Those whom the gods love grow young."

"To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability."

"Be happy, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart's-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty."

"I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty."