Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism
15 quotes
"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking other people to live as one wishes to live."
"There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People."
"Most personalities have been obliged to be rebels. Half their strength has been wasted in friction."
"The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development."
"It is rarely in the world's history that its ideal has been one of joy and beauty. The worship of pain has far more often dominated the world."
"An educated person's ideas of Art are drwan naturally from what Art has been, whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what Art has never been; and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure it by a standard on the rejection of which its real perfection depends."
"To call an artist morbid because he deals with morbidity as his subject-matter is as silly as if one called Shakespeare mad because he wrote ‘King Lear."
"The arts that have escaped [uniformity] best are the arts in which the public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it."
"The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence."
"The evolution of man is slow. The injustice of men is great."
"It is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg."
"The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is."
"For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses."
"I can quite understand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and admit of its accumulation, as long as he himself is able under those conditions to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life. But it is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance."
"A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias."