Oscar Wilde (1960)

Robert Morley: Oscar Wilde

Quotes 

• Oscar Wilde : [to Lord Alfred]  Shall I tell you of the great drama of my life? It is that I put my genius into my life, but only my talent into my work. Writing *bores* me so.

• Oscar Wilde : London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the serious people produce the fogs or the fogs produce the serious people, I really don't know. But the whole thing rather gets on my nerves.

• Constance Wilde : [being worried because he was late, Constance greets Oscar as he finally arrives home]  Oscar! Where have you been?

  Oscar Wilde : My dear,

  [kisses her] 

  Oscar Wilde : on my way home, I fell among clever people. One cannot go anywhere nowadays without meeting clever people. The thing is becoming an absolute menace. I wish to Heaven there were a few fools left.

• Oscar Wilde : [looks down at his glass]  Absinthe- it helps you to see things as you wish they were... then you see them as they're not... finally, you see them as they really are. That's the most horrible thing in the world.

• Oscar Wilde : Pleasure's the only thing worth having a theory about! One must be true to oneself, one's own life. That's the important thing.

  Robert Ross : If one lives one's own life one might have to pay a terrible price for it.

  Oscar Wilde : One's overcharged for everything nowadays.

• Sir Edward Carson : This, Mr. Wilde, is the magazine The Chameleon. You've read the story "The Priest and The Acolyte"?

  Oscar Wilde : Yes.

  Sir Edward Carson : Was not the story that of a scandal about a priest and a boy who served him there at the altar?

  Oscar Wilde : I read the story only once many months ago and nothing would induce me to read it again.

  Sir Edward Carson : You thought it immoral?

  Oscar Wilde : It was worse, it was badly written.

• Lord Alfred Douglas : I thought it kinder to tell her the truth, pure and simple.

  Oscar Wilde : The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

• Oscar Wilde : There is a melancholy in an empty theater.

• Oscar Wilde : Bosie, you weren't looking for a friend. You were looking for a weapon.

• [last lines] 

  Oscar Wilde : Will you play something gay?