198 Quotes by Oscar Wilde

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone, but it walks in harmony with the universe.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
Everything popular is wrong.
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
Hatred is blind, as well as love.
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
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.
Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.
I have nothing to declare except my genuis.
I 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.
I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.
I can resist everything except temptation.
I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.
Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Charity creates a multitude of sins.
Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
Do 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.
Biography lends to death a new terror.
Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
Women are made to be loved, not understood.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.
Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Who, being loved, is poor?
While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Why was I born with such contemporaries?
Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.
Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.
Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.
The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.
The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.
Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.
No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.
Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.
There is always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.
Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.
Only the shallow know themselves.
Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
Our 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.
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.
Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.
One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
There's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about.
This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
Those whom the gods love grow young.
To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.
To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
There 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.
True friends stab you in the front.
There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.
When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.
When good Americans die they go to Paris.
When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.
An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.
The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.
There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.
There is no sin except stupidity.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.
Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.
Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.
As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
As 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.
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
I 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.
I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.
I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.
I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
A true friend stabs you in the front.
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.
A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.
A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.
Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
All art is quite useless.
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.
Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.
It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.
Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us.
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
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.
Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.
In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.
It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
If one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.
If 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.
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
It is always the unreadable that occurs.
It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.
It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.
If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.
The only way to achieve greatness is to be misunderstood
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken
The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention
Be yourself, everyone else is already taken
Illicit love is the sweetest temptation, tasting both bitter and divine.
Become the best version of yourself; everyone else is taken.
Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the obstacles you have overcome.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars
Always remember that the smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention
I can resist anything except temptation.
Sometimes I pretend to be normal, but it gets boring, so I go back to being me.
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken... and let's be honest, they probably misplaced their keys three times this morning.
Be yourself; everyone else is already taken, but don’t worry—most of them are lost too!
Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources and innovate where they least expect it.
Life is too important to be taken seriously, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t chase your dreams—preferably in a dazzling way.
Success isn't about finding yourself; it's about creating yourself—one deliciously chaotic failure at a time.

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