Oscar Wilde

He to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Psycholog\xady is in its infancy, as a science. I hope in the interests of Art, it will always remain so.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lip.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Prayer must never be answered: if it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes correspondence.

— Oscar Wilde

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— 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

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

She is a peacock in everything but beauty.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime.

— Oscar Wilde

The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

She is not a subject.

— Oscar Wilde

We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.

— Oscar Wilde

For to disagree with three-fourths of the British public on all points is one of the first elements of sanity, one of the deepest consolations in all moments of spiritual doubt.

— Oscar Wilde

'The Lady's World' should be made the recognized organ for the expression of women's opinions on all subjects of literature, art and modern life, and yet it should be a magazine that men could read with pleasure.

— Oscar Wilde

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

— Oscar Wilde

God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

Fool, nothing is impossible in Russia but reform.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Reforms in Russia are very tragic, but they always end in a farce.

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist – the problem is so entirely the same in both cases. To know exactly how much oil one must put with one's vinegar.

— Oscar Wilde

Even things that are true can be proved.

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

What fire does not destroy, it hardens

— Oscar Wilde

Life is much too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

There is always more brass than brains in an aristocracy.

— Oscar Wilde

A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Good kings are the enemies of democracy.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Heaven is a despotism. I shall be at home there.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

There are few things easier than to live badly and to die well.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Experience, the name men give to their mistakes.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Indifference is the revenge the world takes on mediocrities.

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

All art is quite useless.

— Oscar Wilde

When a man has no enemy left there must be something mean about him.

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

I cannot understand your nature. If my nature had been made to suit your comprehension rather than my own requirements, I am afraid I would have made a very poor figure in the world.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

To drift with every passion till my soul Which do but mar the secret of the whole.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

She said that she would dance with me if I brought her red roses," cried the young Student; "but in all my garden there is no red rose.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Be happy, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart's-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty.

— Oscar Wilde

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Why, what a wonderful piece of luck! Here is a red rose! I have never seen any rose like it in all my life. It is so beautiful that I am sure it has a long Latin name.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.

— Oscar Wilde

I am not young enough to know everything.

— Oscar Wilde

[E]verybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

It is always the unreadable that occurs.

— Oscar Wilde

I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that when one loses one's good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. Your picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

— Oscar Wilde

His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

— Oscar Wilde

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

— Oscar Wilde

She lives the poetry she cannot write.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

— Oscar Wilde

The final revelation is that Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.

— Oscar Wilde

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— Oscar Wilde

Only the shallow know themselves.

— Oscar Wilde

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

— Oscar Wilde

Meredith is a prose Browning, and so is Browning. He used poetry as a medium for writing in prose.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

— Oscar Wilde

Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.

— Oscar Wilde

There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other—by language, which is the parent, and not the child, of thought.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography.

— Oscar Wilde

The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman's heart.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Oh! journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read.

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— 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

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

— Oscar Wilde

Puritans cannot destroy a beautiful thing, yet, by means of their extraordinary prurience, they can almost taint beauty for a moment. It is chiefly, I regret to say, through journalism that such people find expression. I regret it because there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

In married life three is company and two none.

— Oscar Wilde

I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.

— Oscar Wilde

The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

— Oscar Wilde

Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight rope. When the verities become acrobats, we can judge them.

— Oscar Wilde

When good Americans die they go to Paris.

— Oscar Wilde

Hatred is blind, as well as love.

— Oscar Wilde

It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

All art is quite useless.

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

Action ... is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.

— Oscar Wilde

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

— Oscar Wilde

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

The function of the artist is to invent, not to chronicle.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

It is to do nothing that the elect exist. Action is limited and relative. Unlimited and absolute is the vision of him who sits at ease and watches, who walks in loneliness and dreams.

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

There is no sin except stupidity.

— Oscar Wilde

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Ah! Don't say you agree with me. When people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

— Oscar Wilde

England has done one thing; it has invented and established Public Opinion, which is an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— 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.

— Oscar Wilde

One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

— Oscar Wilde

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

— Oscar Wilde

The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact, scarcely any one at all escapes.

— Oscar Wilde

Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good.

— Oscar Wilde

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

The public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities.... A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to them, and whenever it appears they get so angry and bewildered that they always use two stupid expressions--one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that the work of art is grossly immoral. What they mean by these words seems to me to be this. When they say a work is grossly unintelligible, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is new; when they describe a work as grossly immoral, they mean that the artist has said or made a beautiful thing that is true.

— Oscar Wilde

Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Yes, there is a terrible moral in 'Dorian Gray' - a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.

— Oscar Wilde

Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such a paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering. They have to be told of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve them.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community, and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilisation.

— Oscar Wilde

Now, nothing should be able to harm a man except himself. Nothing should be able to rob a man at all. What a man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance.

— Oscar Wilde

With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

— Oscar Wilde

Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.

— Oscar Wilde

The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace.

— Oscar Wilde

'Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

The ugly and stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live-- undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They never bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Henry; my brains, such as they are-- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks-- we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.

— Oscar Wilde

The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever.

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

— Oscar Wilde

All modes of government are failures. Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies are unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

— Oscar Wilde

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised.

— Oscar Wilde

I can resist everything except temptation.

— Oscar Wilde

When private property is abolished there will be no necessity for crime, no demand for it; it will cease to exist.

— Oscar Wilde

The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

— Oscar Wilde

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.

— Oscar Wilde

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or a dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be considered as an artist.

— Oscar Wilde

Art is Individualism, and Individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. Therein lies its immense value. For what it seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.

— Oscar Wilde

An individual who has to make things for the use of others, and with reference to their wants and their wishes, does not work with interest, and consequently cannot put into his work what is best in him. Upon the other hand, whenever a community or a powerful section of a community, or a government of any kind, attempts to dictate to the artist what he is to do, Art either entirely vanishes, or becomes stereotyped, or degenerates into a low and ignoble form of craft.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honor

— Oscar Wilde

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

— Oscar Wilde

The one thing that the public dislike is novelty. Any attempt to extend the subject matter of art is extremely distasteful to the public; and yet the vitality and progress of art depend in a large measure on the continual extension of subject-matter. The public dislike novelty because they are afraid of it. It represents to them a mode of Individualism, an assertion on the part of the artist that he selects his own subject, and treats it as he chooses.

— Oscar Wilde

Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all, you must not strip it of vitality.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

And it is only fair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always apologise to one in private for what they have written against one in public.

— Oscar Wilde

In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is ridiculous.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

There are as many perfections as there are imperfect men. And while to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free, to the claims of conformity no man may yield and remain free at all.

— Oscar Wilde

There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannises over the body. There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

For what man has sought for is, indeed, neither pain nor pleasure, but simply Life. Man has sought to live intensely, fully, perfectly. When he can do so without exercising restraint on others, or suffering it ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to him, he will be saner, healthier, more civilised, more himself. Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

The fact is, that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesmanlike habits, supplies their demands

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

I can resist everything except temptation.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people's.

— Oscar Wilde

Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. [Answering the question, what is a cynic?]

— Oscar Wilde

I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not.

— Oscar Wilde

For he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die.

— Oscar Wilde

What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.

— Oscar Wilde

There are two ways to dislike poetry: One is to dislike it; the other is to read Pope.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Mrs. Allonby: They say, Lady Hunstanton, that when good Americans die they go to Paris. Lord Illingworth: Oh, they go to America.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

The English country gentleman galloping after a fox — the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Kelvil: May I ask, Lord Illingworth, if you regard the House of Lords as a better institution than the House of Commons? Lord Illingworth: A much better institution of course. We in the House of Lords are never in touch with public opinion. That makes us a civilised body.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Lord Illingworth: The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden. Mrs. Allonby: It ends with Revelations.

— Oscar Wilde

Lady Hunstanton: But do you believe all that is written in the newspapers? Lord Illingworth: I do. Nowadays it is only the unreadable that occurs.

— Oscar Wilde

Lord Illingworth: Women have become too brilliant. Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humour in the woman.Mrs. Allonby: Or the want of it in the man.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Lord Illingworth: Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

— Oscar Wilde

Gerald: I suppose society is wonderfully delightful? Lord Illingworth: To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy.

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

She lives in the poetry she cannot write.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.

— Oscar Wilde

I am always astonishing myself. It is the only thing that makes life worth living.

— Oscar Wilde

Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton. Nothing succeeds like excess.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely if ever do they forgive them.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.

— Oscar Wilde

Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Even the disciple has his uses. He stands behind one's throne, and at the moment of one's triumph whispers in one's ear that, after all, one is immortal.

— Oscar Wilde

The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance. The only thing that can console one for being rich is economy.

— Oscar Wilde

Those whom the gods love grow young.

— Oscar Wilde

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

— Oscar Wilde

Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Patriotism is the vice of nations.

— Oscar Wilde

It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free.

— Oscar Wilde

Only the shallow know themselves.

— Oscar Wilde

In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— 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

To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

One should always be a little improbable.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Time is a waste of money.

— Oscar Wilde

The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated.

— Oscar Wilde

Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?

— Oscar Wilde

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

— Oscar Wilde

I really don’t see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty.

— Oscar Wilde

The number of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one’s clean linen in public.

— Oscar Wilde

I can resist everything except temptation.

— Oscar Wilde

I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.

— Oscar Wilde

My dear fellow, the truth isn't quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty and to someone else if she is plain.

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

Ah! That must be Aunt Augusta. Only relatives, or creditors, ever ring in that Wagnerian manner.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune … to lose both seems like carelessness.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant as the case may be.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Jack: That, my dear Algy, is the whole truth pure and simple. Algernon: The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose.

— Oscar Wilde

Women have no appreciation of good looks—at least, good women have not.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

In married life, three is company, and two is none.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.

— Oscar Wilde

Punctuality is the thief of time.

— Oscar Wilde

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

— Oscar Wilde

It is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.

— Oscar Wilde

I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Mothers, of course, are all right. They pay a chap's bills and don't bother him. But fathers bother a chap and never pay his bills.

— Oscar Wilde

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

— 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

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

No gentleman ever has any money.

— Oscar Wilde

Perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for men. There would be more joy in life if we were to accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes.

— Oscar Wilde

When a man does exactly what a woman expects him to do she doesn't think much of him. One should always do what a woman doesn't expect, just as one should say what she doesn't understand.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

I have a dining room done in different shades of white, with white cushions embroidered in yellow silk: the effect is absolutely delightful and the room beautiful.

— Oscar Wilde

The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.

— Oscar Wilde

The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man. And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not?

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Yesterday I cut an orchid, for my buttonhole.

— Oscar Wilde

I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of simple decorative arts. It would be a golden hour to the children.

— Oscar Wilde

She is a peacock in everything but beauty.

— Oscar Wilde

The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity. But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable.

— Oscar Wilde

I have never given adoration to any body except myself.

— Oscar Wilde

Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One must eat muffins quite calmly, it is the only way to eat them.

— Oscar Wilde

Biography lends to death a new terror.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

— Oscar Wilde

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

— Oscar Wilde

I've now realized for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Oh, I love London society! It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what society should be.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Science can never grapple with the irrational. That is why it has no future before it, in this world.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

Even you are not rich enough, Sir Robert, to buy back your past. No man is.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

I think it is perfectly natural for any artist to admire intensely and love a young man. It is an incident in the life of almost every artist.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Yes, there is a terrible moral in 'Dorian Gray' - a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.

— Oscar Wilde

I love talking about nothing, father. It is the only thing I know anything about.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb a the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

It is always the unreadable that occurs.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

— Oscar Wilde

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

— Oscar Wilde

A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

— Oscar Wilde

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

— Oscar Wilde

The only possible society is oneself.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

In its primary aspect, a painting has no more spiritual message than an exquisite fragment of Venetian glass. The channels by which all noble and imaginative work in painting should touch the soul are not those of the truths of lives.

— 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

However, it is always nice to be expected, and not to arrive.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— 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.

— Oscar Wilde

Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting.

— Oscar Wilde

Oh, why will parents always appear at the wrong time? Some extraordinary mistake in nature, I suppose.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Writing bores me so.

— Oscar Wilde

Lord Caversham: No woman, plain or pretty, has any common sense at all, sir. Common sense is the privilege of our sex. Lord Goring: Quite so. And we men are so self-sacrificing that we never use it, do we, father?

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Do you really think, Arthur, that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to.

— Oscar Wilde

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Lord Goring: Now I'm gonna give you some good advice. Mrs. Cheveley: Pray don't. You should never give a woman something she can't wear in the evening

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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.

— Oscar Wilde

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life. Mothers are different. Mothers are darlings.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Let us have no machine-made ornament at all; it is all bad and worthless and ugly.

— Oscar Wilde

When one pays a visit it is for the purpose of wasting other people's time, not one's own.

— Oscar Wilde

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

— Oscar Wilde

In designing the scenery and costumes for any of Shakespeare's plays, the first thing the artist has to settle is the best date for the drama. This should be determined by the general spirit of the play more than by any actual historical references which may occur in it.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

If we men married the women we deserved, we should have a very bad time of it.

— Oscar Wilde

Punctuality is the thief of time

— Oscar Wilde

True friends stab you in the front.

— Oscar Wilde

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it.

— Oscar Wilde

I don't at all like knowing what people say of me behind my back. It makes me far too conceited.

— Oscar Wilde

I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare’s plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all, you must not strip it of vitality.

— Oscar Wilde

Now don't stir. I'll be back in five minutes. And don't fall into any temptations while I am away.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

I have said to you to speak the truth is a painful thing. To be forced to tell lies is much worse.

— Oscar Wilde

Everything popular is wrong.

— Oscar Wilde

The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.

— Oscar Wilde

A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Only good questions deserve good answers.

— Oscar Wilde

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

— Oscar Wilde

It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little.

— Oscar Wilde

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