Oscar Wilde Quotes

» These days man knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

» He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.

» Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

» The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

» True friends stab you in the front.

» All that I desire to point out is the general principle that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

» Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

» Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.

» Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

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

» The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

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

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

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

» The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.

» I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

» To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

» A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

» It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

» I am not young enough to know everything.

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

» The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.

» Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

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

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

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

» Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

» Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

» A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

» Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.

» I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

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

» No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

» Who, being loved, is poor?

» 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.

» Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us.

» Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.

» All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

» 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.

» Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

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

» Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

» A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

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

» The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.

» 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.

» Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

» A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

» A true friend stabs you in the front.

» Everything popular is wrong.

» I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

» I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.

» 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.

» Life is too important to be taken seriously.

» Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

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

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

» Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

» Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

» The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.

» Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

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

» 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.

» It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.

» A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

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

» When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.

» Hatred is blind, as well as love.

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

» I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.

» Women are made to be loved, not understood.

» There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.

» 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.

» The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

» No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

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

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

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

» Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

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

» Charity creates a multitude of sins.

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

» The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

» There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

» Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

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

» Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

» The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.

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

» A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

» I can resist everything except temptation.

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

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

» This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

» Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.

» Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.

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

» Biography lends to death a new terror.

» All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

» In married life three is company and two none.

» To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

» Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

» I have nothing to declare except my genuis.

» It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.

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

» The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.

» There is no sin except stupidity.

» To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.

» The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

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

» Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.

» The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

» It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

» Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.

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

» One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.

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

» A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

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

» 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.

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

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

» Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

» In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

» It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

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

» Only the shallow know themselves.

» Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.

» Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

» The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

» Why was I born with such contemporaries?

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

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

» Those whom the gods love grow young.

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

» 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.

» The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

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

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

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

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

» What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.

» One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.

» It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

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

» The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

» I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

» Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

» When good Americans die they go to Paris.

» I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.

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

» It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.

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

» Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

» All art is quite useless.

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

» Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

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

» As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.

» The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

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

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

» The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

» Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.

» Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes.

» A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

» Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

» Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.

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

» A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.

» The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

» The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

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

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

» Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

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

» There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

» 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.

» I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

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

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

» 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.

» It is always the unreadable that occurs.

» Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.

» Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the two sexes.

» There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

» 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 always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies.

» 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 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.

» One can survive anything these days, except death, and live down anything except a good reputation.

» All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.

» Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

» Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.

» There's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about.

» Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.

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

» While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.

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

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

» 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.

» In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.

» Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.

» Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

Who Said It?

Who Said: "In science, as in art, and, as I believe, in every other sphere of human activity, there may be wisdom in a multitude of counsellors, but it is only in one or two of them." Click To See

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