Ballad Of Reading Gaol Quotes

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

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 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.

Each man kills the thing he loves.

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

For he who lives more lives than one More deaths than one must 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!” Ballad of Reading Gaol, 1898

We know not whether laws be right Or whether laws be wrong All we know who lie in gaol Is that the walls are strong And each day is like a year A year whose days are long.

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;

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

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.

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 happy cloud that passed In such strange freedom by.

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.

something was dead in each of us, and what was dead was hope.

A pesar de todo, cada hombre mata lo que ama, Para cada uno, oigan esto, Algunos lo hacen con una mirada amarga, Algunos con una palabra adulatoria, El cobarde lo hace con un beso, ¡El hombre valiente con una espada!

And each man kills the thing he loves.

Ah! Happy they whose hearts can break And peace of pardon win! How else may man make straight his path And cleanse his soul from sin? How else but through a broken heart May the Lord Christ enter in?

Yet each man kills the things he loves

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!

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.

For his mourners will be outcast men, And outcasts always mourn.

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.

The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all

He who lives more lives than one More deaths than one must die.

He who lives more lives than one More deaths than one must die

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 space 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

My heart stole back across wide wastes of years To One who wandered by a lonely sea, And sought in vain for any place of rest: ‘Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest. I, only I, must wander wearily, And bruise my feet, and drink wine salt with tears.’ Poem:

and life, seeing her own image, was still, and dared not to speak.

Ruin followed, like the echo of a bitter cry, or the shadow that hunts with the beast of prey.

The sea, as Euripides says in one of his plays about Iphigenia, washes away the stains and wounds of the world.

Doom that walks always swiftly, because she goes to the shedding of blood

For all men kill the thing they love

They glided past, they glided fast, Like travellers 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

For lo, what changes time can bring! The cycles of revolving years May free my heart from all its fears, And teach my lips a song to sing. Before yon field of trembling gold Is garnered into dusty sheaves, Or ere the autumn’s scarlet leaves Flutter as birds adown the wold, I may have run the glorious race, And caught the torch while yet aflame, And called upon the holy name Of Him who now doth hide His face. ARONA.

When I say that I am convinced of these things I speak with too much pride. Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the city of God. It is so wonderful that it seems as if a child could reach it in a summer's day. And so a child could. But with me and such as me it is different. One can realise a thing in a single moment, but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet. It is so difficult to keep 'heights that the soul is competent to gain.' We think in eternity, but we move slowly through time; and how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I need not tell again, nor of the weariness and despair that creep back into one's cell, and into the cell of one's heart, with such strange insistence that one has, as it were, to garnish and sweep one's house for their coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter master, or a slave whose slave it is one's chance or choice to be.

And I will sing how sad Proserpina Unto a grave and gloomy Lord was wed, And lure the silver-breasted Helena Back from the lotus meadows of the dead, So shalt thou see that awful loveliness For which two mighty Hosts met fearfully in war’s abyss! And

Within this restless, hurried, modern world We took our hearts' full pleasure—You and I, And now the white sails of our ship are furled, And spent the lading of our argosy. Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan, For very weeping is my gladness fled, Sorrow has paled my young mouth's vermilion, And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed. But all this crowded life has been to thee No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell Of viols, or the music of the sea That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell.

Nay! for perchance that poppy-crownèd god Is like the watcher by a sick man’s bed Who talks of sleep but gives it not; his rod Hath lost its virtue, and, when all is said, Death is too rude, too obvious a key To solve one single secret in a life’s philosophy. And

Thou art the same: ’tis I whose wretched soul Takes discontent to be its paramour, And gives its kingdom to the rude control Of what should be its servitor,—for sure Wisdom is somewhere, though the stormy sea Contain it not, and the huge deep answer ‘’Tis not in me.’ To

O we are wearied of this sense of guilt, Wearied of pleasure’s paramour despair, Wearied of every temple we have built, Wearied of every right, unanswered prayer, For man is weak; God sleeps: and heaven is high: One fiery-coloured moment: one great love; and lo! we die. Ah!

With beat of systole and of diastole One grand great life throbs through earth’s giant heart, And mighty waves of single Being roll From nerveless germ to man, for we are part Of every rock and bird and beast and hill, One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill. From

It is difficult not to be unjust to what one loves.

He took them, and shaped them into a song. They become his, because he made them lovely. They were built out of music, and so not built at all, and therefore built for ever.

Open it at that sad madrigal that begins "Que m'importe que tu sois sage? Sois belle! et sois triste" and you will find yourself worshiping sorrow as you never worshiped joy.

Nowadays, we have so few mysteries left to us that we cannot afford to part with one of them.

When man acts he is a puppet. When he describes he is a poet.

In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister.

At twilight nature becomes a wonderfully suggestive effect, and is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets.

If you find in it something of which you feel that you are unjustly accused, remember that one should be thankful that there is any fault of which one can be unjustly accused.

It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist's life is that he cannot realize his ideal.

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

So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail, And all my sweetest singing out of tune.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves

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 each day is like a year, A year whose day is long.

Oscar Wilde said that “All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime,” and then got sent off to Reading Gaol to reconsider and write ballads.

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.

Intellectual criticism will bind Europe together in bonds far closer than those that can be forged by shopman or sentimentalists. It will give us the peace that springs from understanding.

For our high Gods have sick and wearied grown Of all our endless sins, our vain endeavour For wasted days of youth to make atone By pain or prayer or priest, and never, never, Hearken they now to either good or ill, But send their rain upon the just and the unjust at will. They sit at ease, our Gods they sit at ease, Strewing with leaves of rose their scented wine, They sleep, they sleep, beneath the rocking trees Where asphodel and yellow lotus twine, Mourning the old glad days before they knew What evil things the heart of man could dream, and dreaming do. And

The security of society lies in custom and unconscious instinct, and the basis of the stability of society, as a healthy organism, is the complete absence of any intelligence amongst its members. The great majority of people being fully aware of this, rank themselves naturally on the side of that splendid system that elevates them to the dignity of machines, and rage so wildly against the intrusion of the intellectual faculty into any question that concerns life, that one is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

Y todo el dolor que le impulsó a dar aquel grito tan amargo, y los feroces remordimientos y los sudores de sangre, nadie los comprendió mejor que yo: pues quien vive más de una vida más de una muerte ha de morir.

Pero no hay sueño cuando tienen que llorar quienes nunca lloraron, y así nosotros —el tonto, el farsante, el bribón— hicimos aquella interminable vigilia y, por cada cerebro, en manos del dolor, reptaba el terror de otro.

Read the whole book, suffer it to tell even one of its secrets to your soul, and your soul will grow eager to know more, and will feed upon poisonous honey, and make atonement for terrible pleasures that it has never known.

Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow. All her bright golden hair Tarnished with rust, She that was young and fair Fallen to dust. Lily-like, white as snow, She hardly knew She was a woman, so Sweetly she grew. Coffin-board, heavy stone, Lie on her breast, I vex my heart alone, She is at rest. Peace, Peace, she cannot hear Lyre or sonnet, All my life’s buried here, Heap earth upon it. AVIGNON Poem:

She told me of your two chief faults, your vanity, and your being, as she termed it, "all wrong about money". I have a distinct recollection of how I laughed. I had no idea that the first would bring me to prison, and the second to bankruptcy.

and over our heads will float the bluebird singing of beautiful and impossible things, of things that are lovely and that never happen, of things that are not and that should be. But before this comes to pass we must cultivate the lost art of lying

همه ی مردم آن‌چه را که دوست می‌دارند می‌کشند گروهی با نگاهی سرد یا خشم آلود می‌کشند گروهی با چاپلوسی از پا در می‌آورند. بزدل ها با بوسه می‌کشند و دلیران با شمشیر برخی عشق خود را هنگام جوانی می‌کشند و برخی در روزگار پیری گروهی با دست هوس خفه‌اش می‌کنند و جمعی دیگر با دست آزمندی برای عده‌ای دوران عشق کمتر از آنچه باید دوام می آورد و برای عده‌ای دیگر بیشتر از آن‌چه لازم است عمر می‌کند. عده ای عشق خود را می‌فروشند و افرادی هم عشق می‌خرند بعضی هنگام کشتن عشق خود اشک می‌ریزند و بعضی خاموش می‌مانند اما همه این‌ها همه ی آنچه را که دوست دارند می‌کشند اما هیچ کس به مرگ محکوم نمی‌شود

Cyril: surely you would acknowledge that art expresses the temper of its age, the spirit of its time, the moral and social conditions that surround it, and under whose influence it is produced. Vivian: Certainly not! art never expresses anything but itself. This is the principle of my new aesthetics; and it is this, more than that vital connection between form and substance

For Wilde, the most perfect individual is anarchic and antisocial, obeying laws only of his own making. As in "The Critic as an artist", he dismisses action as a lower form of existence than contemplation. "Being" rather than "doing" is the goal towards which man should strive, and the ideal State should facilitate this. "The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is" (Anne Varty's Introduction)

Art never expresses anything but itself. It has an independent life, just as thought has, and develops purely on its own lines (...) So far from being the creation of its time, it is usually in direct opposition to it, and the only history that it preserves for us is the history of its own progress. (...) In no case it represents its age. To pass from the art of a time to the time itself is the great mistake that all historians commit.

Oysa herkes öldürür sevdiğini, Kulak verin bu dediklerime. Kimi bir bakışıyla yapar bunu, Kimi dalkavukça sözlerle. Korkaklar öpücük ile öldürür, Yürekliler kılıç darbeleriyle. Kimi gençken öldürür sevdiğini, Kimi yaşlı iken. Şehvetli ellerle boğar kimi, Kimi altından ellerle. Merhametli kişi bıçak kullanır, Çünkü bıçakla ölen çabuk soğur. Kimi yeterince sevmez, Kimi fazla sever. Kimi satar, Kimi de satın alır. Kimi gözyaşı döker öldürürken, Kimi kılı kıpırdamadan. Çünkü herkes öldürür sevdiğini, Ama herkes öldürdü diye ölmez.

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 a 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!

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!  

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

Ведь каждый, кто на свете жил, Любимых убивал. Each man kills the thing he loves. The Ballad of Reading Gaol.