Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

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On devrait toujours être amoureux. C'est la raison pour laquelle on ne devrait jamais se marier. (Une femme sans importance)

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Celui qui cherche une femme belle, bonne et intelligente, n'en cherche pas une mais trois.

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La bigamie, c'est quand on a deux femmes.
La monotonie c'est quand on n'en a qu'une.

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“Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious”
Oscar Wilde

I don’t want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.
Oscar Wilde

Jedermann kann für die Leiden eines Freundes Mitgefühle aufbringen. Es bedarf aber eines wirklich edlen Charakters, um sich über die Erfolge eines Freundes zu freuen.
Oscar Wilde

Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won’t expect it back.
Oscar Wilde

I am not young enough to know everything.
Oscar Wilde

… Patriotismus ist die Tugend der Bosheit.
Oscar Wilde - (1854 - 1900), eigentlich Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills, irischer Lyriker, Dramatiker und Bühnenautor

… Mäßigkeit ist verhängnisvoll; nichts hat so viel Erfolg wie das Übermass.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), eigentlich Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills, irischer Lyriker, Dramatiker und Bühnenautor

… “Men always want to be a woman’s first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about these things. What (women) like is to be a man’s last romance.”
Oscar Wilde

… Wer findig genug ist, eine Lüge glaubhaft darzustellen, mag lieber geradezu die Wahrheit sagen.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900),  Wertheimer (Hg.), Weisheiten von Oscar Wilde, übers. v. Dr. Paul Wertheimer, Wien und Leipzig, Wiener Verlag 1920

… Alle charmanten Leute sind verwöhnt, darin liegt das Geheimnis ihrer Anziehungskraft.
Oscar Wilde

Gute Vorsätze sind Schecks, auf eine Bank ausgestellt, bei der man kein Konto hat.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

… Ich bin der Meinung, daß die Weiber von allen Eigenschaften des Mannes die Grausamkeit am meisten schätzen, da ihre Instinkte von einer wundervollen Primitivität sind. Wir sind auf dem Wege, sie zu emanzipieren; dessen ungeachtet, werden sie Sklaven bleiben, die gehorsam der Winke ihres Herren harren. Du wirst von einem Weibe nur geliebt werden, wenn du es beherrschst.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900),

… Ich habe gelernt, daß nicht das, was ich tue, falsch ist, sondern das, was infolge meines Handelns aus mir wird.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

… Ich liebe es, Theater zu spielen. Es ist so viel realistischer als das Leben.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

… Ich verstehe nicht, weshalb man soviel Wesens um die Technik des Komödienschreibens macht. Man braucht doch nur die Feder in ein Whisky-Glas zu tauchen.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

… Am Anfang widersteht eine Frau dem Ansturm eines Mannes, am Ende verhindert sie seinen Rückzug.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

… Skeptizismus ist der Anfang des Glaubens.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

… Die Moral ist immer die letzte Zuflucht von Leuten, die die Schönheit nicht begreifen.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

… “If you are not long, I will wait for you all my life.”
Oscar Wilde

… “There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.”
Oscar Wilde

… “The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.”
Oscar Wilde

… “America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.”
Oscar Wilde

… “Everything in moderation, including moderation.”
Oscar Wilde

… “Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.”
Oscar Wilde

… Die Selbstbezichtigung ist auch eine Art Luxus. Wenn wir uns selbst die Schuld geben, glauben wir, niemand sonst habe das Recht, uns die Schuld zu geben.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

… “There is no sin except stupidity.”
(D) … Es gibt keine Sünde außer der Dummheit.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900) The Critic as Artist

… Es gibt nur etwas, das schlimmer ist als Ungerechtigkeit, und das ist Gerechtigkeit ohne Schwert in der Hand. Wenn Recht nicht Macht ist, ist es Übel.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

… Es gibt weder moralische noch unmoralische Bücher. Bücher sind gut oder schlecht geschrieben, sonst nichts.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

… Solange der Krieg etwas Frevelhaftes hat, behält er seine Faszination. Erst wenn die Menschen in ihm etwas ganz Gewöhnliches sehen, wird ihnen die Lust daran vergehen.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

… “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
Oscar Wilde

… “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
Oscar Wilde

… “I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

… “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

… “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
Oscar Wilde

… “It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
 Oscar Wilde

… “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

… “Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”
Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist

… “You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”
Oscar Wilde

… “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
Oscar Wilde

… “Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”
Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories

… “A good friend will always stab you in the front.”
Oscar Wilde

… “Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.”
Oscar Wilde

… “I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.”
Oscar Wilde

… “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
… Vergib stets deinen Feinden. Nichts ärgert sie so.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

… Manche Richter sind so stolz auf ihre Unbestechlichkeit, daß sie die Gerechtigkeit vergessen.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

… Muße, nicht Arbeit, ist das Ziel des Menschen.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), Der Sozialismus und die Seele des Menschen. Aus dem Zuchthaus zu Reading. Aestethisches Manifest; übers. von Hedwig Lachmann und Gustav Landauer, Verlag Karl Schnabel, Berlin 1904

Leise sprich, leise geh,
Störe sie nie,
Wachsen hört unterm Schnee
Maßliebchen sie.

Alles ihr golden Haar
Rost nun zum Raub,
Sie, die so lieblich war,
Moder und Staub!

Lilienweiß, lilienzart,
Lebte sie Traum,
Daß sie zum Weibe ward,
Wußte sie kaum.

Sargholz und schwerer Stein
Deckt sie nun zu,
Mich quält mein Herz allein.
Ihr wurde Ruh.

Still, still! Was sollen ihr
Leider und Lieder;
All meine Welt liegt hier -
Wirf Erde nieder!
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

Die Sphinx in einer Zimmerecke wacht,
schon länger, als ich denken kann,
die schöne Sphinx und schweigt mich an
im Wechselspiel von Tag und Nacht.

Mein träger Liebling, komm heran,
und leg den Kopf mir in den Schoß,
damit ich dir den Nacken kos'
und deinen Samtleib streicheln kann.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

… Es ist ein schlechter Trost zu wissen, daß jemand, der uns ein schlechtes Mittagessen servierte oder eine mindere Weinsorte aufgewartet hat, ein völlig einwandfreies Privatleben führt. Auch Kardinaltugenden entschädigen nicht für kalte Vorspeisen.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

… Es ist wichtiger, daß sich jemand über eine Rosenblüte freut, als daß er ihre Wurzel unter das Mikroskop bringt.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

… “Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”
Oscar Wilde

… “Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”
Oscar Wilde

… “I am not young enough to know everything.”
Oscar Wilde

… “The heart was made to be broken.”
Oscar Wilde

… “You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.”
Oscar Wilde

… “A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.”
Oscar Wilde

… “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”
Oscar Wilde

… “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
Oscar Wilde

… “The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays

… “I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.”
Oscar Wilde

… “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

… Es kommt darauf an, den Körper mit der Seele und die Seele durch den Körper zu heilen.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

… “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”
Oscar Wilde

… “With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?”
Oscar Wilde

… “Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
Oscar Wilde

… “I can resist anything except temptation.”
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

… “A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
Oscar Wilde

… “All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.”
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

… “Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.”
Oscar Wilde

… “It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

… Indiskretion ist etwas, auf das man sich nur bei den wenigsten Frauen verlassen kann.
Oscar Wilde

… Jeder Eindruck, den man macht, schafft Feinde. Um populär zu bleiben, muß man mittelmäßig sein.
Oscar Wilde

… Jedermann wird als König geboren. Und die meisten sterben im Exil – wie so viele Könige.
Oscar Wilde

… Klatsch ist etwas Reizendes. Geschichte zum Beispiel ist im wesentlichen nicht anderes als Klatsch. Skandalgeschichten hingegen sind ein durch Moralität verdorbener Klatsch.
Oscar Wilde

… Langeweile ist eine Sünde, für die es keine Absolution gibt.
Oscar Wilde

… Leben - es gibt nichts Selteneres auf der Welt. Die meisten Menschen existieren, weiter nichts.
Oscar Wilde

… Leben ist eine Bühne, aber das Stück ist schlecht besetzt.
Oscar Wilde

… Leute, die sich die Finger verbrennen, verstehen nichts vom Spiel mit dem Feuer.
Oscar Wilde

… Lieber mach’ ich mir einen Feind, als daß ich auf eine Pointe verzichte.
Oscar Wilde

… Männer können analysiert werden, Frauen nur angebetet.
Oscar Wilde

… Auf doppelte Weise gelangt man dazu, die Kunst zu verabscheuen: indem man sie nämlich von Haus aus haßt, oder indem man um sie mit dem Verstande wirbt.
Oscar Wilde - Wertheimer (Hg.), Weisheiten von Oscar Wilde, übers. v. Dr. Paul Wertheimer, Wien und Leipzig, Wiener Verlag 1920

… Man kann immer nett zu jenen sein, die uns nichts angehen.
Oscar Wilde

… “Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.”
(D) … Man kann leicht am Leid des Freundes teilnehmen. Viel schwerer fällt es, an seinen Erfolgen Freude zu haben.
Oscar Wilde

… Man sollte nie etwas tun, worüber man nach Tisch nicht reden kann.
Oscar Wilde - Lehren und Sätze zum Gebrauch für die Jugend (Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young), 1894. Erste deutsche Übersetzung 1929 in: Kraus (Hg.), Die Fackel, 1899-1936

… Nachahmung ist die höchste Form der Anerkennung.
Oscar Wilde

… Nur die Oberflächlichen kennen sich selbst.
Oscar Wilde

… Nichtstun ist die allerschwierigste Beschäftigung und zugleich diejenige, die am meisten Geist voraussetzt.

Oscar Wilde

… Nur ein Mann, der seine Rechnungen nicht bezahlt, darf hoffen, im Gedächtnis der Kaufleute weiterzuleben.
Oscar Wilde

… Reisen veredelt den Geist und räumt mit unseren Vorurteilen auf.
Oscar Wilde

… Schaffen begrenzt das Gesichtsfeld, betrachten erweitert es.
Oscar Wilde

… Schön sind nur die Dinge, die uns nichts angehen.
Oscar Wilde

… Selbstlosigkeit ist ausgereifter Egoismus.
Oscar Wilde

“Who, being loved, is poor?”

Oscar Wilde

“Crying is for plain women. Pretty women go shopping.”

Oscar Wilde

… “I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.”
(D) … Ich habe einen ganz einfachen Geschmack: Ich bin immer mit dem Besten zufrieden.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900),

… “Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”
Oscar Wilde

… “I have nothing to declare except my genius.”
Oscar Wilde

… “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”
Oscar Wilde

… “A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.”
Oscar Wilde

… “No good deed goes unpunished.”
Oscar Wilde

… “Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.”
Oscar Wilde

… “We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.”
Oscar Wilde

…  “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
Oscar Wilde

“Every woman is a rebel.”
Oscar Wilde

… “Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.”
Oscar Wilde

… Sich selbst zu überraschen ist, was das Leben lebenswert macht.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

… “I like men who have a future and women who have a past.”
Oscar Wilde

… “The world is a stage and the play is badly cast.”
Oscar Wilde

“I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.”
Oscar Wilde

“Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.”
Oscar Wilde

… “To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.”
Oscar Wilde

… “We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.”
Oscar Wilde

… “A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.”
Oscar Wilde

… “How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being”
Oscar Wilde

… Greise glauben alles. Männer bezweifeln alles. Junge wissen alles.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900) Lehren und Sätze zum Gebrauch für die Jugend (Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young), 1894. Erste deutsche Übersetzung 1929 in: Kraus (Hg.), Die Fackel, 1899-1936

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Frauen sind mehr innerweltlich orientiert als Männer, sie stehen dem Körper näher, schützen sich mehr gegen aussen…
Frauen sind Gemälde. Männer sind Probleme. Wenn Sie wissen wollen, was eine Frau wirklich meint - was übrigens immer ein gefährliches Unterfangen ist - sehen Sie sie an, und hören Sie ihr nicht zu.
Oscar Wilde

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A Woman of No Importance

… “After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.”
Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance

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An Ideal Husband

… “Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.”
Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”

Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

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The Canterville Ghost

… “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 tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”
Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost

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Lady Windermere's Fan

… “Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.”
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

… “There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.”
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

L'expérience est le nom que chacun donne à ses erreurs.
L'Éventail de Lady Windermere

Qu'est-ce qu'un cynique  ? C'est un homme qui connaît le prix de tout et la valeur de rien.
L'Éventail de Lady Windermere

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The Ballad Of Reading Gaol

Oscar Wilde,

I

He did not wear his scarlet coat,

For blood and wine are red,

And blood and wine were on his hands

When they found him with the dead,

The poor dead woman whom he loved,

And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men

In a suit of shabby grey;

A cricket cap was on his head,

And his step seemed light and gay;

But I never saw a man who looked

So wistfully at the day.

He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,

And his step seemed light and gay;

But I never saw a man who looked

So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked

With such a wistful eye

Upon that little tent of blue

Which prisoners call the sky,

And at every drifting cloud that went

With sails of silver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain,

Within another ring,

And was wondering if the man had done

A great or little thing,

When a voice behind me whispered low,

"That fellow’s got to swing."

Dear Christ! the very prison walls

Suddenly seemed to reel,

And the sky above my head became

Like a casque of scorching steel;

And, though I was a soul in pain,

My pain I could not feel.

I only knew what hunted thought

Quickened his step, and why

He looked upon the garish day

With such a wistful eye;

The man had killed the thing he loved

And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves

By each let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,

And some when they are old;

Some strangle with the hands of Lust,

Some with the hands of Gold:

The kindest use a knife, because

The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,

Some sell, and others buy;

Some do the deed with many tears,

And some without a sigh:

For each man kills the thing he loves,

Yet each man does not die.

He does not die a death of shame

On a day of dark disgrace,

Nor have a noose about his neck,

Nor a cloth upon his face,

Nor drop feet foremost through the floor

Into an empty place

He does not sit with silent men

Who watch him night and day;

Who watch him when he tries to weep,

And when he tries to pray;

Who watch him lest himself should rob

The prison of its prey.

He does not wake at dawn to see

Dread figures throng his room,

The shivering Chaplain robed in white,

The Sheriff stern with gloom,

And the Governor all in shiny black,

With the yellow face of Doom.

He does not rise in piteous haste

To put on convict-clothes,

While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats, and notes

Each new and nerve-twitched pose,

Fingering a watch whose little ticks

Are like horrible hammer-blows.

He does not know that sickening thirst

That sands one’s throat, before

The hangman with his gardener’s gloves

Slips through the padded door,

And binds one with three leathern thongs,

That the throat may thirst no more.

He does not bend his head to hear

The Burial Office read,

Nor, while the terror of his soul

Tells him he is not dead,

Cross his own coffin, as he moves

Into the hideous shed.

He does not stare upon the air

Through a little roof of glass;

He does not pray with lips of clay

For his agony to pass;

Nor feel upon his shuddering cheek

The kiss of Caiaphas.

II

Six weeks our guardsman walked the yard,

In a suit of shabby grey:

His cricket cap was on his head,

And his step seemed light and gay,

But I never saw a man who looked

So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked

With such a wistful eye

Upon that little tent of blue

Which prisoners call the sky,

And at every wandering cloud that trailed

Its raveled fleeces by.

He did not wring his hands, as do

Those witless men who dare

To try to rear the changeling Hope

In the cave of black Despair:

He only looked upon the sun,

And drank the morning air.

He did not wring his hands nor weep,

Nor did he peek or pine,

But he drank the air as though it held

Some healthful anodyne;

With open mouth he drank the sun

As though it had been wine!

And I and all the souls in pain,

Who tramped the other ring,

Forgot if we ourselves had done

A great or little thing,

And watched with gaze of dull amaze

The man who had to swing.

And strange it was to see him pass

With a step so light and gay,

And strange it was to see him look

So wistfully at the day,

And strange it was to think that he

Had such a debt to pay.

For oak and elm have pleasant leaves

That in the spring-time shoot:

But grim to see is the gallows-tree,

With its adder-bitten root,

And, green or dry, a man must die

Before it bears its fruit!

The loftiest place is that seat of grace

For which all worldlings try:

But who would stand in hempen band

Upon a scaffold high,

And through a murderer’s collar take

His last look at the sky?

It is sweet to dance to violins

When Love and Life are fair:

To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes

Is delicate and rare:

But it is not sweet with nimble feet

To dance upon the air!

So with curious eyes and sick surmise

We watched him day by day,

And wondered if each one of us

Would end the self-same way,

For none can tell to what red Hell

His sightless soul may stray.

At last the dead man walked no more

Amongst the Trial Men,

And I knew that he was standing up

In the black dock’s dreadful pen,

And that never would I see his face

In God’s sweet world again.

Like two doomed ships that pass in storm

We had crossed each other’s way:

But we made no sign, we said no word,

We had no word to say;

For we did not meet in the holy night,

But in the shameful day.

A prison wall was round us both,

Two outcast men were we:

The world had thrust us from its heart,

And God from out His care:

And the iron gin that waits for Sin

Had caught us in its snare.

III

In Debtors’ Yard the stones are hard,

And the dripping wall is high,

So it was there he took the air

Beneath the leaden sky,

And by each side a Warder walked,

For fear the man might die.

Or else he sat with those who watched

His anguish night and day;

Who watched him when he rose to weep,

And when he crouched to pray;

Who watched him lest himself should rob

Their scaffold of its prey.

The Governor was strong upon

The Regulations Act:

The Doctor said that Death was but

A scientific fact:

And twice a day the Chaplain called

And left a little tract.

And twice a day he smoked his pipe,

And drank his quart of beer:

His soul was resolute, and held

No hiding-place for fear;

He often said that he was glad

The hangman’s hands were near.

But why he said so strange a thing

No Warder dared to ask:

For he to whom a watcher’s doom

Is given as his task,

Must set a lock upon his lips,

And make his face a mask.

Or else he might be moved, and try

To comfort or console:

And what should Human Pity do

Pent up in Murderers’ Hole?

What word of grace in such a place

Could help a brother’s soul?

With slouch and swing around the ring

We trod the Fool’s Parade!

We did not care: we knew we were

The Devil’s Own Brigade:

And shaven head and feet of lead

Make a merry masquerade.

We tore the tarry rope to shreds

With blunt and bleeding nails;

We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,

And cleaned the shining rails:

And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,

And clattered with the pails.

We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,

We turned the dusty drill:

We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,

And sweated on the mill:

But in the heart of every man

Terror was lying still.

So still it lay that every day

Crawled like a weed-clogged wave:

And we forgot the bitter lot

That waits for fool and knave,

Till once, as we tramped in from work,

We passed an open grave.

With yawning mouth the yellow hole

Gaped for a living thing;

The very mud cried out for blood

To the thirsty asphalte ring:

And we knew that ere one dawn grew fair

Some prisoner had to swing.

Right in we went, with soul intent

On Death and Dread and Doom:

The hangman, with his little bag,

Went shuffling through the gloom

And each man trembled as he crept

Into his numbered tomb.

That night the empty corridors

Were full of forms of Fear,

And up and down the iron town

Stole feet we could not hear,

And through the bars that hide the stars

White faces seemed to peer.

He lay as one who lies and dreams

In a pleasant meadow-land,

The watcher watched him as he slept,

And could not understand

How one could sleep so sweet a sleep

With a hangman close at hand?

But there is no sleep when men must weep

Who never yet have wept:

So we—the fool, the fraud, the knave—

That endless vigil kept,

And through each brain on hands of pain

Another’s terror crept.

Alas! it is a fearful thing

To feel another’s guilt!

For, right within, the sword of Sin

Pierced to its poisoned hilt,

And as molten lead were the tears we shed

For the blood we had not spilt.

The Warders with their shoes of felt

Crept by each padlocked door,

And peeped and saw, with eyes of awe,

Grey figures on the floor,

And wondered why men knelt to pray

Who never prayed before.

All through the night we knelt and prayed,

Mad mourners of a corpse!

The troubled plumes of midnight were

The plumes upon a hearse:

And bitter wine upon a sponge

Was the savior of Remorse.

The cock crew, the red cock crew,

But never came the day:

And crooked shape of Terror crouched,

In the corners where we lay:

And each evil sprite that walks by night

Before us seemed to play.

They glided past, they glided fast,

Like travelers through a mist:

They mocked the moon in a rigadoon

Of delicate turn and twist,

And with formal pace and loathsome grace

The phantoms kept their tryst.

With mop and mow, we saw them go,

Slim shadows hand in hand:

About, about, in ghostly rout

They trod a saraband:

And the damned grotesques made arabesques,

Like the wind upon the sand!

With the pirouettes of marionettes,

They tripped on pointed tread:

But with flutes of Fear they filled the ear,

As their grisly masque they led,

And loud they sang, and loud they sang,

For they sang to wake the dead.

“Oho!” they cried, “The world is wide,
But fettered limbs go lame!

And once, or twice, to throw the dice

Is a gentlemanly game,

But he does not win who plays with Sin

In the secret House of Shame.”

No things of air these antics were

That frolicked with such glee:

To men whose lives were held in gyves,

And whose feet might not go free,

Ah! wounds of Christ! they were living things,

Most terrible to see.

Around, around, they waltzed and wound;

Some wheeled in smirking pairs:

With the mincing step of demirep

Some sidled up the stairs:

And with subtle sneer, and fawning leer,

Each helped us at our prayers.

The morning wind began to moan,

But still the night went on:

Through its giant loom the web of gloom

Crept till each thread was spun:

And, as we prayed, we grew afraid

Of the Justice of the Sun.

The moaning wind went wandering round

The weeping prison-wall:

Till like a wheel of turning-steel

We felt the minutes crawl:

O moaning wind! what had we done

To have such a seneschal?

At last I saw the shadowed bars

Like a lattice wrought in lead,

Move right across the whitewashed wall

That faced my three-plank bed,

And I knew that somewhere in the world

God’s dreadful dawn was red.

At six o’clock we cleaned our cells,

At seven all was still,

But the sough and swing of a mighty wing

The prison seemed to fill,

For the Lord of Death with icy breath

Had entered in to kill.

He did not pass in purple pomp,

Nor ride a moon-white steed.

Three yards of cord and a sliding board

Are all the gallows’ need:

So with rope of shame the Herald came

To do the secret deed.

We were as men who through a fen

Of filthy darkness grope:

We did not dare to breathe a prayer,

Or give our anguish scope:

Something was dead in each of us,

And what was dead was Hope.

For Man’s grim Justice goes its way,

And will not swerve aside:

It slays the weak, it slays the strong,

It has a deadly stride:

With iron heel it slays the strong,

The monstrous parricide!

We waited for the stroke of eight:

Each tongue was thick with thirst:

For the stroke of eight is the stroke of Fate

That makes a man accursed,

And Fate will use a running noose

For the best man and the worst.

We had no other thing to do,

Save to wait for the sign to come:

So, like things of stone in a valley lone,

Quiet we sat and dumb:

But each man’s heart beat thick and quick

Like a madman on a drum!

With sudden shock the prison-clock

Smote on the shivering air,

And from all the gaol rose up a wail

Of impotent despair,

Like the sound that frightened marshes hear

From a leper in his lair.

And as one sees most fearful things

In the crystal of a dream,

We saw the greasy hempen rope

Hooked to the blackened beam,

And heard the prayer the hangman’s snare

Strangled into a scream.

And all the woe that moved him so

That he gave that bitter cry,

And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,

None knew so well as I:

For he who lives more lives than one

More deaths than one must die.

IV

There is no chapel on the day

On which they hang a man:

The Chaplain’s heart is far too sick,

Or his face is far too wan,

Or there is that written in his eyes

Which none should look upon.

So they kept us close till nigh on noon,

And then they rang the bell,

And the Warders with their jingling keys

Opened each listening cell,

And down the iron stair we tramped,

Each from his separate Hell.

Out into God’s sweet air we went,

But not in wonted way,

For this man’s face was white with fear,

And that man’s face was grey,

And I never saw sad men who looked

So wistfully at the day.

I never saw sad men who looked

With such a wistful eye

Upon that little tent of blue

We prisoners called the sky,

And at every careless cloud that passed

In happy freedom by.

But there were those amongst us all

Who walked with downcast head,

And knew that, had each got his due,

They should have died instead:

He had but killed a thing that lived

Whilst they had killed the dead.

For he who sins a second time

Wakes a dead soul to pain,

And draws it from its spotted shroud,

And makes it bleed again,

And makes it bleed great gouts of blood

And makes it bleed in vain!

Like ape or clown, in monstrous garb

With crooked arrows starred,

Silently we went round and round

The slippery asphalte yard;

Silently we went round and round,

And no man spoke a word.

Silently we went round and round,

And through each hollow mind

The memory of dreadful things

Rushed like a dreadful wind,

And Horror stalked before each man,

And terror crept behind.

The Warders strutted up and down,

And kept their herd of brutes,

Their uniforms were spick and span,

And they wore their Sunday suits,

But we knew the work they had been at

By the quicklime on their boots.

For where a grave had opened wide,

There was no grave at all:

Only a stretch of mud and sand

By the hideous prison-wall,

And a little heap of burning lime,

That the man should have his pall.

For he has a pall, this wretched man,

Such as few men can claim:

Deep down below a prison-yard,

Naked for greater shame,

He lies, with fetters on each foot,

Wrapt in a sheet of flame!

And all the while the burning lime

Eats flesh and bone away,

It eats the brittle bone by night,

And the soft flesh by the day,

It eats the flesh and bones by turns,

But it eats the heart alway.

For three long years they will not sow

Or root or seedling there:

For three long years the unblessed spot

Will sterile be and bare,

And look upon the wondering sky

With unreproachful stare.

They think a murderer’s heart would taint

Each simple seed they sow.

It is not true! God’s kindly earth

Is kindlier than men know,

And the red rose would but blow more red,

The white rose whiter blow.

Out of his mouth a red, red rose!

Out of his heart a white!

For who can say by what strange way,

Christ brings his will to light,

Since the barren staff the pilgrim bore

Bloomed in the great Pope’s sight?

But neither milk-white rose nor red

May bloom in prison air;

The shard, the pebble, and the flint,

Are what they give us there:

For flowers have been known to heal

A common man’s despair.

So never will wine-red rose or white,

Petal by petal, fall

On that stretch of mud and sand that lies

By the hideous prison-wall,

To tell the men who tramp the yard

That God’s Son died for all.

Yet though the hideous prison-wall

Still hems him round and round,

And a spirit man not walk by night

That is with fetters bound,

And a spirit may not weep that lies

In such unholy ground,

He is at peace—this wretched man—

At peace, or will be soon:

There is no thing to make him mad,

Nor does Terror walk at noon,

For the lampless Earth in which he lies

Has neither Sun nor Moon.

They hanged him as a beast is hanged:

They did not even toll

A reguiem that might have brought

Rest to his startled soul,

But hurriedly they took him out,

And hid him in a hole.

They stripped him of his canvas clothes,

And gave him to the flies;

They mocked the swollen purple throat

And the stark and staring eyes:

And with laughter loud they heaped the shroud

In which their convict lies.

The Chaplain would not kneel to pray

By his dishonored grave:

Nor mark it with that blessed Cross

That Christ for sinners gave,

Because the man was one of those

Whom Christ came down to save.

Yet all is well; he has but passed

To Life’s appointed bourne:

And alien tears will fill for him

Pity’s long-broken urn,

For his mourner will be outcast men,

And outcasts always mourn.

V

I know not whether Laws be right,

Or whether Laws be wrong;

All that we know who lie in gaol

Is that the wall is strong;

And that each day is like a year,

A year whose days are long.

But this I know, that every Law

That men have made for Man,

Since first Man took his brother’s life,

And the sad world began,

But straws the wheat and saves the chaff

With a most evil fan.

This too I know—and wise it were

If each could know the same—

That every prison that men build

Is built with bricks of shame,

And bound with bars lest Christ should see

How men their brothers maim.

With bars they blur the gracious moon,

And blind the goodly sun:

And they do well to hide their Hell,

For in it things are done

That Son of God nor son of Man

Ever should look upon!

The vilest deeds like poison weeds

Bloom well in prison-air:

It is only what is good in Man

That wastes and withers there:

Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,

And the Warder is Despair

For they starve the little frightened child

Till it weeps both night and day:

And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,

And gibe the old and grey,

And some grow mad, and all grow bad,

And none a word may say.

Each narrow cell in which we dwell

Is foul and dark latrine,

And the fetid breath of living Death

Chokes up each grated screen,

And all, but Lust, is turned to dust

In Humanity’s machine.

The brackish water that we drink

Creeps with a loathsome slime,

And the bitter bread they weigh in scales

Is full of chalk and lime,

And Sleep will not lie down, but walks

Wild-eyed and cries to Time.

But though lean Hunger and green Thirst

Like asp with adder fight,

We have little care of prison fare,

For what chills and kills outright

Is that every stone one lifts by day

Becomes one’s heart by night.

With midnight always in one’s heart,

And twilight in one’s cell,

We turn the crank, or tear the rope,

Each in his separate Hell,

And the silence is more awful far

Than the sound of a brazen bell.

And never a human voice comes near

To speak a gentle word:

And the eye that watches through the door

Is pitiless and hard:

And by all forgot, we rot and rot,

With soul and body marred.

And thus we rust Life’s iron chain

Degraded and alone:

And some men curse, and some men weep,

And some men make no moan:

But God’s eternal Laws are kind

And break the heart of stone.

And every human heart that breaks,

In prison-cell or yard,

Is as that broken box that gave

Its treasure to the Lord,

And filled the unclean leper’s house

With the scent of costliest nard.

Ah! happy day they whose hearts can break

And peace of pardon win!

How else may man make straight his plan

And cleanse his soul from Sin?

How else but through a broken heart

May Lord Christ enter in?

And he of the swollen purple throat.

And the stark and staring eyes,

Waits for the holy hands that took

The Thief to Paradise;

And a broken and a contrite heart

The Lord will not despise.

The man in red who reads the Law

Gave him three weeks of life,

Three little weeks in which to heal

His soul of his soul’s strife,

And cleanse from every blot of blood

The hand that held the knife.

And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand,

The hand that held the steel:

For only blood can wipe out blood,

And only tears can heal:

And the crimson stain that was of Cain

Became Christ’s snow-white seal.

VI

In Reading gaol by Reading town

There is a pit of shame,

And in it lies a wretched man

Eaten by teeth of flame,

In burning winding-sheet he lies,

And his grave has got no name.

And there, till Christ call forth the dead,

In silence let him lie:

No need to waste the foolish tear,

Or heave the windy sigh:

The man had killed the thing he loved,

And so he had to die.

And all men kill the thing they love,

By all let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword!

***

The Picture of Dorian Gray

… “Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

… “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

… “You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

… “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. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

… “Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

… “I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

… “To define is to limit.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

… “Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

… “Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

… “Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

… “The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

… In Wirklichkeit sind Gewissen und Feigheit ein und dasselbe. Gewissen lautet nur die eingetragene Firma. Weiter gar nichts.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900) Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray (The Picture of Dorian Gray), 1890. Übersetzt von Hedwig Lachmann und Gustav Landauer

…  “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

… “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

… “I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

… “Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“What of Art?
-It is a malady.
--Love?
-An Illusion.
--Religion?
-The fashionable substitute for Belief.
--You are a sceptic.
-Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith.
--What are you?
-To define is to limit.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

… “When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

… “Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

(D) … Man kann nicht vorsichtig genug sein in der Wahl seiner Feinde.
Oscar Wilde - Wilde, Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray (The Picture of Dorian Gray), 1890. Übersetzt von Hedwig Lachmann und Gustav Landauer

(D) … Nur Leute, die ihre Rechnungen bezahlen, brauchen Geld.
Oscar Wilde - Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray (The Picture of Dorian Gray), 1890. Übersetzt von Hedwig Lachmann und Gustav Landauer

Le seul moyen de se délivrer de la tentation, c'est d'y céder.
(Le Portrait de Dorian Gray)

***

Jedermann kann für die Leiden eines Freundes Mitgefühle aufbringen.
Es bedarf aber eines wirklich edlen Charakters, um sich über die Erfolge eines Freundes zu freuen.

Frauen sind Gemälde. Männer sind Probleme. Wenn Sie wissen wollen, was eine Frau wirklich meint - was übrigens immer ein gefährliches Unterfangen ist - sehen Sie sie an, und hören Sie ihr nicht zu.

Nur die Oberflächlichen kennen sich selbst.

Heutzutage kennen die Leute vor allem den Preis und nicht den Wert.

Ziel des Lebens ist die Selbstentwicklung. Das eigene Wesen völlig zu Entfaltung bringen, das ist unsere Bestimmung.