Oscar Wilde
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Oscar WildeA 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 WildeA gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.
Oscar WildeA little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Oscar WildeA man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.
Oscar WildeA man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Oscar WildeA man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
Oscar WildeA man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
Oscar WildeA poet can survive everything but a misprint.
Oscar WildeA thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Oscar WildeA true friend stabs you in the front.
Oscar WildeA work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.
Oscar WildeAh, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.
Oscar WildeAlas, I am dying beyond my means.
Oscar WildeAll art is quite useless.
Oscar WildeAll bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
Oscar WildeAll that I desire to point out is the general principle that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
Oscar WildeAll women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
Oscar WildeAlways forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar WildeAmbition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.
Oscar WildeAmbition is the last refuge of the failure.
Oscar WildeAmerica is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
Oscar WildeAn excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.
Oscar WildeAn idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
Oscar WildeAnybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.
Oscar WildeArguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.
Oscar WildeArguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.
Oscar WildeArt is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.
Oscar WildeAs long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
Oscar WildeAs long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
Oscar WildeBetween men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
Oscar WildeBigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
Oscar WildeBiography lends to death a new terror.
Oscar WildeBy giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
Oscar WildeCharity creates a multitude of sins.
Oscar WildeChildren begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
Oscar WildeConsistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Oscar WildeConversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Oscar WildeDeath and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
Oscar WildeDeceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
Oscar WildeDemocracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
Oscar WildeDo you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.
Oscar WildeEducation is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Oscar WildeEvery portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
Oscar WildeEvery saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
Oscar WildeEverybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
Oscar WildeEverything popular is wrong.
Oscar WildeExperience is one thing you can't get for nothing.
Oscar WildeExperience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
Oscar WildeFashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Oscar WildeFathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.
Oscar WildeHatred is blind, as well as love.
Oscar WildeHe has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
Oscar WildeHow 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 WildeHow marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.
Oscar WildeI always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
Oscar WildeI am not young enough to know everything.
Oscar WildeI am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.
Oscar WildeI am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.
Oscar WildeI can resist everything except temptation.
Oscar WildeI can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.
Oscar WildeI choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Oscar WildeI have nothing to declare except my genuis.
Oscar WildeI have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
Oscar WildeI like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
Oscar WildeI never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
Oscar WildeI put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
Oscar WildeI regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.
Oscar WildeI see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.
Oscar WildeI sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
Oscar WildeI suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.
Oscar WildeI think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
Oscar WildeI want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.
Oscar WildeIf one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
Oscar WildeIf one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.
Oscar WildeIf one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk.
Oscar WildeIf there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.
Oscar WildeIf you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.
Oscar WildeIf you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
Oscar WildeIllusion is the first of all pleasures.
Oscar WildeIn all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
Oscar WildeIn America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.
Oscar WildeIn America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.
Oscar WildeIn married life three is company and two none.
Oscar WildeIn modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.
Oscar WildeIt is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
Oscar WildeIt is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Oscar WildeIt is always the unreadable that occurs.
Oscar WildeIt is better to be beautiful than to be good. But… it is better to be good than to be ugly.
Oscar WildeIt is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
Oscar WildeIt is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.
Oscar WildeIt is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
Oscar WildeIt is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.
Oscar WildeIt is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.
Oscar WildeIt is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.
Oscar WildeKeep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
Oscar WildeLaughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
Oscar WildeLife imitates art far more than art imitates Life.
Oscar WildeLife is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
Oscar WildeLife is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
Oscar WildeLife is too important to be taken seriously.
Oscar WildeMan can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.
Oscar WildeMan is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
Oscar WildeMan is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
Oscar WildeMemory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.
Oscar WildeMen always want to be a woman's first love – women like to be a man's last romance.
Oscar WildeMen marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.
Oscar WildeModeration is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
Oscar WildeMorality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
Oscar WildeMost people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar WildeMost 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 WildeMr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.
Oscar WildeNo great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
Oscar WildeNo man is rich enough to buy back his past.
Oscar WildeNo object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.
Oscar WildeNo woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
Oscar WildeNothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
Oscar WildeNothing is so aggravating than calmness.
Oscar WildeNow that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.
Oscar WildeOne can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
Oscar WildeOne of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
Oscar WildeOne should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
Oscar WildeOne should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
Oscar WildeOne's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.
Oscar WildeOne's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.
Oscar WildeOnly the shallow know themselves.
Oscar WildeOrdinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
Oscar WildeOur ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.
Oscar WildePatriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
Oscar WildePerhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
Oscar WildePessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
Oscar WildeQuestions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.
Oscar WildeQuotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.
Oscar WildeRidicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.
Oscar WildeRomance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.
Oscar WildeSelfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
Oscar WildeSeriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
Oscar WildeSociety exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.
Oscar WildeSome cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
Oscar WildeSuccess is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
Oscar WildeThe advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.
Oscar WildeThe basis of optimism is sheer terror.
Oscar WildeThe books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Oscar WildeThe critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.
Oscar WildeThe cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar WildeThe difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
Oscar WildeThe good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.
Oscar WildeThe imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.
Oscar WildeThe man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.
Oscar WildeThe moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.
Oscar WildeThe old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
Oscar WildeThe one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
Oscar WildeThe only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
Oscar WildeThe only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it… I can resist everything but temptation.
Oscar WildeThe public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Oscar WildeThe pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar WildeThe salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.
Oscar WildeThe true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Oscar WildeThe truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar WildeThe typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
Oscar WildeThe well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.
Oscar WildeThe world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.
Oscar WildeThe world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
Oscar WildeThe world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.
Oscar WildeThere are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
Oscar WildeThere are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating – people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
Oscar WildeThere are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
Oscar WildeThere is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.
Oscar WildeThere is always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies.
Oscar WildeThere is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
Oscar WildeThere is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.
Oscar WildeThere is no sin except stupidity.
Oscar WildeThere is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
Oscar WildeThere is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.
Oscar WildeThere is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.
Oscar WildeThere is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.
Oscar WildeThere is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Oscar WildeThere is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better.
Oscar WildeThere's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about.
Oscar WildeThese days man knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing.
Oscar WildeThis suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
Oscar WildeThose whom the gods love grow young.
Oscar WildeTo expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.
Oscar WildeTo lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
Oscar WildeTo love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
Oscar WildeTrue friends stab you in the front.
Oscar WildeWe are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Oscar WildeWhat is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar WildeWhat we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.
Oscar WildeWhen a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.
Oscar WildeWhen good Americans die they go to Paris.
Oscar WildeWhen I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.
Oscar WildeWhen the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.
Oscar WildeWhenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
Oscar WildeWhenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Oscar WildeWhile we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.
Oscar WildeWho, being loved, is poor?
Oscar WildeWhy was I born with such contemporaries?
Oscar WildeWoman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.
Oscar WildeWomen are made to be loved, not understood.
Oscar WildeWomen are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.
Oscar WildeWomen love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.
Oscar WildeWork is the curse of the drinking classes.
Oscar Wilde