Oscar Wilde quote: "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."

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry,...
OSCAR WILDE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

True friends stab you in the front.
OSCAR WILDE

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.
OSCAR WILDE

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
OSCAR WILDE

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
OSCAR WILDE

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

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

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

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

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

In its primary aspect, a painting has no more spiritual message than an exquisite fragment of Veneti...
OSCAR WILDE

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

Writing bores me so.
OSCAR WILDE

There is always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies.
OSCAR WILDE

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

Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to ...
OSCAR WILDE

'The Lady's World' should be made the recognized organ for the expression of women's...
OSCAR WILDE

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

In married life three is company and two none.
OSCAR WILDE

I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of sim...
OSCAR WILDE

Charity creates a multitude of sins.
OSCAR WILDE

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

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

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

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is ...
OSCAR WILDE

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
OSCAR WILDE

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

Everything popular is wrong.
OSCAR WILDE

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
OSCAR WILDE

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is ...
OSCAR WILDE

The great events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thin...
OSCAR WILDE

We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows th...
OSCAR WILDE

The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him.
OSCAR WILDE

Life! Life! Don't let us go to life for our fulfillment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by...
OSCAR WILDE

Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a mauvais quart d'heure made up of exquisite moments.
OSCAR WILDE

Yet each man kills the thing he loves from all let this be heard some does it with a bitter look som...
OSCAR WILDE

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

There's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows...
OSCAR WILDE

One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually u...
OSCAR WILDE

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
OSCAR WILDE

This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again.
OSCAR WILDE

From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point...
OSCAR WILDE

His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except ...
OSCAR WILDE

An educated person's ideas of Art are drwan naturally from what Art has been, whereas the new work o...
OSCAR WILDE

Only people who look dull ever get into the House of Commons, and only people who are dull ever succ...
OSCAR WILDE

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.
OSCAR WILDE

He thinks like a Tory, and talks like a Radical, and that's so important nowadays.
OSCAR WILDE

Pardon me, you are not engaged to any one. When you do become engaged to some one, I, or your father...
OSCAR WILDE

People who love only once in their lives are shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their...
OSCAR WILDE

What a fuss people make about fidelity! Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It...
OSCAR WILDE

They are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not.
OSCAR WILDE

The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes.
OSCAR WILDE

When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again it...
OSCAR WILDE

Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin, but twenty years of marriage make her somethi...
OSCAR WILDE

They flaunt their conjugal felicity in one's face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins.
OSCAR WILDE

On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American...
OSCAR WILDE

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

Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, ...
OSCAR WILDE

London is full of women who trust their husbands. One can always recognize them. They look so thorou...
OSCAR WILDE

Once can survive everything nowadays, except death.
OSCAR WILDE

For he who lives more lives than one: More deaths than one must die.
OSCAR WILDE

I am dying beyond my means.
OSCAR WILDE

To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intel...
OSCAR WILDE

The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
OSCAR WILDE

I delight in men over seventy. They always offer one the devotion of a lifetime.
OSCAR WILDE

I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there...
OSCAR WILDE

That does not seem to me to be a grave objection. Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London socie...
OSCAR WILDE

MRS. ALLONBY: She told me yesterday, and in quite a loud voice too, that she was only eighteen. It w...
OSCAR WILDE

There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they...
OSCAR WILDE

Yes, I am a thorough republican. No other form of government is so favorable to the growth of art.
OSCAR WILDE

Talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your...
OSCAR WILDE

Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends up blocking his retreat.
OSCAR WILDE

They keep saying the right person will come along, I think mine got hit by a truck.
OSCAR WILDE

I like men who have a future and women who have a past
OSCAR WILDE

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating --people who know absolutely everythin...
OSCAR WILDE

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, t...
OSCAR WILDE

If one tells the truth, one is sure sooner or later to be found out
OSCAR WILDE

If you love somebody, let them go. If they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never...
OSCAR WILDE

Punctuality is the thief of time.
OSCAR WILDE

If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation.
OSCAR WILDE

...music is the perfect type of art. Music can never reveal its ultimate secret. This, also, is the ...
OSCAR WILDE

Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don't listen, an...
OSCAR WILDE

Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very m...
OSCAR WILDE

None of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
OSCAR WILDE

Experience is the name we give to our mistakes.
OSCAR WILDE

A person who, because he has corns himself, always treads on other people's toes.
OSCAR WILDE

The basis for optimism is sheer terror.
OSCAR WILDE

A pessimist is an optimist with experience
OSCAR WILDE

Good taste is the excuse I've always given for leading such a bad life.
OSCAR WILDE

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. -Oscar Wilde.
OSCAR WILDE

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the two sexe...
OSCAR WILDE

What is mind but motion in the intellectual sphere?
OSCAR WILDE

The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so...
OSCAR WILDE

The fact is, you have fallen lately, Cecily, into a bad habit of thinking for yourself. You should g...
OSCAR WILDE

Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our ...
OSCAR WILDE

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

The mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-?-brac shop, all...
OSCAR WILDE

Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.
OSCAR WILDE

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everythi...
OSCAR WILDE

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

In the old times men carried out their rights for themselves as they lived, but nowadays every baby ...
OSCAR WILDE

He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone.
OSCAR WILDE

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

As long as war is looked upon as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked on a...
OSCAR WILDE

The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, w...
OSCAR WILDE

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

I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is si...
OSCAR WILDE

To get back one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies
OSCAR WILDE

I drink to separate my body from my soul.
OSCAR WILDE

He rides in the row at ten o clock in the morning, goes to the Opera three times a week, changes his...
OSCAR WILDE

Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. What this century worships is w...
OSCAR WILDE

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have it's fascination. When it is looked upon a...
OSCAR WILDE

Those whom the gods love grow young.
OSCAR WILDE

In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefi...
OSCAR WILDE

Youth! There is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in Life's lum...
OSCAR WILDE

Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.
OSCAR WILDE

There is only one real tragedy in a woman's life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and he...
OSCAR WILDE

The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, wo...
OSCAR WILDE

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

Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are re...
OSCAR WILDE

To be really mediæval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be r...
OSCAR WILDE

Nothing succeeds like success.
OSCAR WILDE

When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy.
OSCAR WILDE

An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship.
OSCAR WILDE

Work is the curse of the drinking class.
OSCAR WILDE

Work is a refuge of people who have nothing better to do.
OSCAR WILDE

If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
OSCAR WILDE

Time is waste of money.
OSCAR WILDE

Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any othe...
OSCAR WILDE

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. It is grossly selfish to require of one'...
OSCAR WILDE

All that I desire to point out is the general principle that Life imitates Art far more than Art imi...
OSCAR WILDE

In a very ugly and sensible age, the arts borrow, not from life, but from each other.
OSCAR WILDE

Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite...
OSCAR WILDE

No great artist ever sees things as they really are, if he did he would cease to be an artist.
OSCAR WILDE

Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice...
OSCAR WILDE

Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all.
OSCAR WILDE

All art is quite useless.
OSCAR WILDE

It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.
OSCAR WILDE

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

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

When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old,...
OSCAR WILDE

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the...
OSCAR WILDE

The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, educ...
OSCAR WILDE

Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite en...
OSCAR WILDE

In spite of the roaring of the young lions at the Union, and the screaming of the rabbits in the hom...
OSCAR WILDE

The exquisite art of idleness, one of the most important things that any University can teach.
OSCAR WILDE

I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated serious...
OSCAR WILDE

Art is not to be taught in Academies. It is what one looks at, not what one listens to, that makes t...
OSCAR WILDE

Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attraction of others.
OSCAR WILDE

As a wicked man I am a complete failure. Why, there are lots of people who say I have never really d...
OSCAR WILDE

Plain women are always jealous of their husbands. Beautiful women never are. They are always so oc...
OSCAR WILDE

Find expression for a sorrow, and it will become dear to you. Find expression for a joy, and you wi...
OSCAR WILDE

The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.
OSCAR WILDE

There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America.
OSCAR WILDE

LORD GORING:
I am glad you have called. I am going to give you some good advice.
MRS. CHEVELEY...
OSCAR WILDE

LORD GORING:
My father told me to go to bed an hour ago. I don't see why I shouldn't give you ...
OSCAR WILDE

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.
OSCAR WILDE

The best way to make children good is to make them happy.
OSCAR WILDE

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgi...
OSCAR WILDE

Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect fo...
OSCAR WILDE

Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.
OSCAR WILDE

As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.
OSCAR WILDE

People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about s...
OSCAR WILDE

The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is...
OSCAR WILDE

As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognize the liar by his rich rhythmic utteranc...
OSCAR WILDE

The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generatio...
OSCAR WILDE

That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating t...
OSCAR WILDE

Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic -- a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beau...
OSCAR WILDE

I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across ... Please do not shoot t...
OSCAR WILDE

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.

Oscar Wilde

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