Quotes by Oscar Wilde

“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 man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.”

“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.”

“A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.”

“Alas, I am dying beyond my means.”

“All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.”

“All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.”

“Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.”

“Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.”

“Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.”

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

“An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.”

“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”

“Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.”

“Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.”

“Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.”

“Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.”

“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.”

“Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety and strangeness. Good people exasperate one's reason; bad people stir one's imagination.”

“Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods. Beauty is the symbol of symbols. Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses nothing. When it shows us itself, it shows us the whole fiery-coloured world.”

“Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.”

“Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.”

“Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.”

“Biography lends to death a new terror.”

“By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”

“Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.”

“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

“Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

“Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.”

“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.”

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

“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”

“Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.”

“Everything popular is wrong.”

“Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.”

“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”

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

“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.”

“How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.”

“I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.”

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”

“I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.”

“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 have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.”

“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 put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.”

“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.”

“If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.”

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

“If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.”

“If one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk.”

“If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.”

“If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.”

“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.”

“In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.”

“In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.”

“In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.”

“In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances, invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.”

“In judging of a beautiful statue, the aesthetic faculty is absolutely and completely gratified by the splendid curves of those marble lips that are dumb to our complaint, the noble modelling of those limbs that are powerless to help us.”

“In married life three is company and two none.”

“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 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 by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.”

“It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.”

“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.”

“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.”

“Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.”

“Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.”

“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.”

“Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.”

“Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.”

“London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce the serious people, or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don't know.”

“Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.”

“Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.”

“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.”

“Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.”

“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.”

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

“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.”

“No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.”

“No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.”

“No man is rich enough to buy back his past.”

“No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.”

“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”

“One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.”

“One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.”

“One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.”

“One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.”

“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.”

“Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.”

“Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.”

“Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.”

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

“Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.”

“She is a peacock in everything but beauty.”

“Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.”

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

“Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.”

“Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.”

“The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.”

“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 function of the artist is to invent, not to chronicle.”

“The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.”

“The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.”

“The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.”

“The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.”

“The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”

“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”

“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 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 world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.”

“There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.”

“There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”

“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 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.”

“There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.”

“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.”

“There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

“There 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.”

“There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate - not to the artist, but to the public, blinding them to all but harming the artist not at all.”

“This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.”

“Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.”

“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.”

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

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

“What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

“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 I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.”

“When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.”

“Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.”

“Women marry men hoping they will change. Men marry women hoping they will not. So each is disappointed.”

“You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”

“You can never be too rich or too thin.”

“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.”

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”