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 I like to do all the talking myself. It saves time, and prevents arguments.
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 Hatred is blind, as well as love.
OSCAR WILDE Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go
OSCAR WILDE It is very vulgar to talk about one's business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then mere...
OSCAR WILDE Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and lit...
OSCAR WILDE Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. The nineteent...
OSCAR WILDE No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter enti...
OSCAR WILDE The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of...
OSCAR WILDE The old believe everything; the middle aged suspect everything, and the young know everything.
OSCAR WILDE I have found that all ugly things are made by those who strive to make something beautiful, and that...
OSCAR WILDE And beauty is a form of genius -- is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is ...
OSCAR WILDE It is exactly because a man cannot do a thing that he is a proper judge of it
OSCAR WILDE Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem ne...
OSCAR WILDE Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
OSCAR WILDE Misfortunes one can endure -- they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's ow...
OSCAR WILDE Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.
OSCAR WILDE To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is...
OSCAR WILDE Experience is the name we give to our past mistakes
OSCAR WILDE Education is an admirable thing, but nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
OSCAR WILDE Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is...
OSCAR WILDE The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of ...
OSCAR WILDE And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness...
OSCAR WILDE It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.
OSCAR WILDE