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Quotes from The Ballad of Reading Gaol — Oscar Wilde

1854–1900

← All quotes by Oscar Wilde

14 quotes

And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

When a voice behind me whispered low,
"That fellow's got to swing."

The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?

The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

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!

The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

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.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

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!

The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity's machine.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

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.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

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!

The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

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.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

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.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Oscar Wilde (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.