Quotes by Oscar Wilde (Page 3 of 4)

Looking good and dressing well is a necessity. Having a purpose in life is not.

What the artist is always looking for is the mode of existence in which soul and body are one and indivisible: in which the outward is expressive of the inward: in which form reveals.

The Bostonians take their learning too sadly: culture with them is an accomplishment rather than an atmosphere; their Hub, as they call it, is the paradise of prigs.

You don't seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none.

Married men are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not.

Nowadays, all the married men live like bachelors, and all the bachelors like married men.

I never take any notice to what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do.

I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.

Nature is a wet place where large numbers of ducks fly overhead uncooked.

Be moderate in all things, including moderation.

It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

More than half of modern culture depends upon what one shouldn't read.

When you are not on your pedestal you are not interesting.

Don't be discouraged if your children reject your advice. Years later they will offer it to their own offspring.

Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved.

All art is at once surface and symbol.

They have been eating muffins. That looks like repentance.

One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them.

Oh! I killed Bunbury this afternoon... I mean poor Bunbury died this afternoon.
What did he die of?
Bunbury? Oh, he was exploded!

It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone and can be made as offensive as a brickbat.

Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualification.

Never so sweet a repast as the Reaper's when you tread upon the threshold of a Quiznos.

To shut one's eyes to half of life that one may live securely is as though one blinded oneself that one might walk with more safety in a land of pit and precipice.

Don't imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you.

It is not the prisoners who need reformation, it is the prisons.

Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development.

It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institutions of private property.

If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it.

The only thing worse than quoting me, is not quoting me.

The growing influence of women is the one reassuring thing in our political life.

The youth of the present day are quite monstrous. They have absolutely no respect for dyed hair.

Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They're the only things we can pay.

Finding the meaning of life is easy. Simply get a dictionary, go to the 'L' section, and find the word 'life.'

In England ... education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and would probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.

Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!

Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity.

Every impulse we strangle will only poison us.

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

The best revenge is to live well.

I don't want to earn my living, I want to live.

Scepticism is the beginning of Faith.

Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.

She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.

It's the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

What is said of man is nothing; the point is, who says it.

Sooner or later we have all to pay for what we do.

It lies like a leper in purple, it sits like a dead thing smeared with gold.

With an evening coat and a white tie, anybody, even a stockbroker, can gain a reputation for being civilized.

I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood.

Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief.

Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic -- a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.

It is curious how vanity helps the successful man and wrecks the failure.

The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is ridiculous.

The only thing that ever consoles man for the stupid things he does is the praise he always gives himself for doing them.

As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.

The ability of the theist to misunderstand a thing is directly proportional to the obviousness of the thing.

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it.

We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.

There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation.

All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon.

I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man.

In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential.

It is only about things that do not interest one that one can give a really unbiased opinion, which is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always absolutely valueless.

My dear fellow, the way you flirt with Gwendolen is perfectly disgraceful. It is almost as disgraceful as the way Gwendolen flirts with you.

Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it.

It is only when one has lost all things, that one knows that one possesses it.

There is much more before me. I have hills far steeper to climb, valleys much darker to pass through. And I have to get it all out of myself. Neither religion, morality, nor reason can help me at all.

Those whom he saved from their sins are saved simply for beautiful moments in their lives.

To the artist, expression is the only mode under which he can conceive life at all. To him what is dumb is dead.

The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible.  What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered.

I must say... that I ruined myself: and that nobody, great or small, can be ruined except by his own hand.

To be really mediæval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes.

Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.

Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons.

Pleasure without Champagne is purely artificial.

Two men look out a window. One sees mud, the other sees the stars.

I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.

A simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle.

The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man's intelligence.

The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole.

A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.

Then there was a man who said, 'I never knew what real happiness was until I got married; by then it was too late'

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

I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.

The man who says his wife can't take a joke, forgets that she took him.

The English have a miraculous power of turning wine into water.

I don't recognize you -- I've changed a lot.

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

There is only one real tragedy in a woman's life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future invariably her husband.

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

Now and then it is a joy to have one's table red with wine and roses.

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

Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.

Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.

Life cannot be written; life can only be lived.

We should remember that all the arts are fine arts and all the arts decorative arts.

Though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was possible still, and he was determined to forget.

The night was bitter cold, and the gas-lamps round the square flared and flickered in the keen wind; but his hands were hot with fever, and his forehead burned like fire.

In life there is really no great or small thing. All things are of equal value and of equal size.

Punctuality is but the thief of time.

Mr. Worthing! Rise, sir, from this semi-recumbent posture. It is most indecorous.

It is only intellectually lost who ever argue.

They walked softly, as men do instinctively at night. The lamp cast fantastic shadows on the wall and staircase. A rising wind made some of the windows rattle.

It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter, who on the coloured canvas, reveals himself.

He would never again tempt innocence. He would be good.

Nowadays, people read too many books to appreciate any.

There were opium-dens, where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new.

Anybody can have common sense, provided that they have no imagination.

Because to influence a person is to give one's own soul.

So with curious eyes and sick surmise
We watched him day by day,
And wondered if each one of us
Would end the self-same way,
For none can tell to what red Hell
His sightless soul may stray.

I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous.

As for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.

It is the stupid and the ugly who have the best of it in this world.

Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.

Nowadays 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.

To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.

The moon in her chariot of pearl.

I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.

Behind the perfection of a man's style, must lie the passion of a man's soul.

In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.

Rugby is a game for barbarians played by gentlemen. Football is a game for gentlemen played by barbarians.

What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

I only care to see doctors when I am in perfect health; then they comfort one, but when one is ill they are most depressing.

To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.

The modern sympathy with invalids is morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others.

The beautiful, passionate, ruined South, the land of magnolias and music, of roses and romance ... living on the memory of crushing defeats.

Love is a misunderstanding between two fools.

Beauty ...is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon.

Irony is wasted on the stupid.

What men call the shadow of the body is not the shadow of the body, but is the body of the soul.

You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?

The only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

What fire does not destroy, it hardens.

I drink to separate my body from my soul.

People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately.

At every single moment of one's life one is what one is going to be no less than what one has been.

Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect -- simply a confession of failures.

It is he who has broken the bond of marriage -- not I. I only break its bondage.

I often take exercise. Why only yesterday I had breakfast in bed.

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can't get into it do that.

There can be nothing more frequent than an occasional drink.

We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.

To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.

If a man needs an elaborate tombstone in order to remain in the memory of his country, it is clear that his living at all was an act of absolute superfluity.

He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigraph on his tombstone.

Man is many things, but he is not rational.

Ah! The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, women...merely adored.

The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.

To look at a thing is very different from seeing it.

I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.

Personally, I have a great admiration for stupidity.

We Irish will never achieve anything; but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks.

What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.

Not that I love thy children, whose dull eyes see nothing save their own unlovely woe, Whose minds know nothing, nothing care to know.

Marriage is a long, dull meal with dessert served at the beginning.

Whenever one has anything unpleasant to say, one should always be quite candid.

Football is all very well as a game for rough girls, but is hardly suitable for delicate boys.

People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.

I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement.

Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered.

I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

The condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection is youth.

It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.

True contentment is not having everything, but in being satisfied with everything you have.

Bad artists always admire each others work.

Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.

Lean on principles, one day they'll end up giving way.

The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.

Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar.

Everyone may not be good, but there's always something good in everyone. Never judge anyone shortly because every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.

One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.

Utterly, irrevocably, lost.

The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial.

Nothing worth knowing can be taught.

Ones real life is often the life that one does not lead.

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.

And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.

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

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses.

Tread Lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow.

I tried to visit Albania but I couldn't find it on the map.

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

The criminal classes are so close to us that even the policemen can see them.

For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it.

I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.

When good Americans die they go to Paris.

Before Turner there was no fog in London.

I never saw so many well-dressed, well-fed, business-looking Bohemians in my life.

To be good is to be in harmony with oneself. Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others.

Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval.

I keep a diary in order to enter the wonderful secrets of my life. If I didn't write them down, I should not probably forget all about them.

The quivering, ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been looking into a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.

Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.

Every woman is wrong until she cries.

Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

I can't stand people that do not take food seriously.