Authors
Oscar Wilde Quotes
Best Quotes by Oscar Wilde (Top 10)
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Be yourself, because others are already taken.
Oscar Wilde -
Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar Wilde -
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Oscar Wilde -
I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.
Oscar Wilde -
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
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 books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Oscar Wilde -
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde -
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde -
Women are made to be loved, not understood.
Oscar Wilde
More Oscar Wilde Quotes
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Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.
Oscar Wilde -
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
Oscar Wilde -
You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.
Oscar Wilde -
Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Oscar Wilde -
I am not young enough to know everything.
Oscar Wilde -
The heart was made to be broken.
Oscar Wilde -
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Oscar Wilde -
Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
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 very essence of romance is uncertainty.
Oscar Wilde -
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
Oscar Wilde -
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
Oscar Wilde -
Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
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 -
I can resist everything except temptation.
Oscar Wilde -
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde -
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
Oscar Wilde -
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde -
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Oscar Wilde -
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.
Oscar Wilde -
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
Oscar Wilde -
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
Oscar Wilde -
Who, being loved, is poor?
Oscar Wilde -
There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Oscar Wilde -
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
Oscar Wilde -
I have nothing to declare except my genius.
Oscar Wilde -
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Oscar Wilde -
A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
Oscar Wilde -
Anyone can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend's success.
Oscar Wilde -
Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.
Oscar Wilde -
We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.
Oscar Wilde -
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Oscar Wilde -
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what world calls a romance
Oscar Wilde -
Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
Oscar Wilde -
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
Oscar Wilde -
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
Oscar Wilde -
To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
Oscar Wilde -
Yet each man kills the thing he loves By each let this be heard Some do it with a bitter look Some with a flattering word The coward does it with a kiss The brave man with a sword
Oscar Wilde -
I like men who have a future and women who have a past.
Oscar Wilde -
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
Oscar Wilde -
The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
Oscar Wilde -
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
Oscar Wilde -
We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.
Oscar Wilde -
How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.
Oscar Wilde -
If you are not long, I will wait for you all my life.
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 -
Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.
Oscar Wilde -
There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.
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 -
This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
Oscar Wilde -
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
Oscar Wilde -
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
Oscar Wilde -
Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.
Oscar Wilde -
There is no sin except stupidity.
Oscar Wilde -
The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.
Oscar Wilde -
An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
Oscar Wilde -
Men always want to be a woman’s first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about these things. What (women) like is to be a man’s last romance.
Oscar Wilde -
Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
Oscar Wilde -
Life is too short to learn German
Oscar Wilde -
One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
Oscar Wilde -
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
Oscar Wilde -
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
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 -
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 -
There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
Oscar Wilde -
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
Oscar Wilde -
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
Oscar Wilde -
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
Oscar Wilde -
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Oscar Wilde -
Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be invited to cocktail parties.
Oscar Wilde -
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Oscar Wilde -
The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.
Oscar Wilde -
Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.
Oscar Wilde -
He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
Oscar Wilde -
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.
Oscar Wilde -
I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
Oscar Wilde -
Only the shallow know themselves.
Oscar Wilde -
A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.
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 a warmth and a richness to life that nothing else can bring.
Oscar Wilde -
All art is quite useless.
Oscar Wilde -
No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
Oscar Wilde -
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
Oscar Wilde -
Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is [hu]man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
Oscar Wilde -
The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.
Oscar Wilde -
Consistency is the hallmark of the unimaginative.
Oscar Wilde -
I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
Oscar Wilde -
I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
Oscar Wilde -
Everything popular is wrong.
Oscar Wilde -
I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean
Oscar Wilde -
She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm.
Oscar Wilde -
One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.
Oscar Wilde -
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
Oscar Wilde -
Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.
Oscar Wilde -
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
Oscar Wilde -
Punctuality is the thief of time
Oscar Wilde -
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Oscar Wilde -
Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
Oscar Wilde -
When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.
Oscar Wilde -
When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.
Oscar Wilde -
A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.
Oscar Wilde -
A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
Oscar Wilde -
I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.
Oscar Wilde -
Ah! The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, women...merely adored.
Oscar Wilde -
Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
Oscar Wilde -
Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
Oscar Wilde -
Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.
Oscar Wilde -
I love to talk about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about.
Oscar Wilde -
Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered.
Oscar Wilde -
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
Oscar Wilde -
Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.
Oscar Wilde -
nothing that is worth knowing can be taught
Oscar Wilde -
What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise
Oscar Wilde -
Experience is a question of instinct about life.
Oscar Wilde -
As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
Oscar Wilde -
Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us.
Oscar Wilde -
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.
Oscar Wilde -
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
Oscar Wilde -
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.
Oscar Wilde -
To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.
Oscar Wilde -
A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally
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 -
A kiss may ruin a human life
Oscar Wilde -
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
Oscar Wilde -
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
Oscar Wilde -
Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.
Oscar Wilde -
Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.
Oscar Wilde -
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
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 -
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
Oscar Wilde -
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Oscar Wilde -
People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.
Oscar Wilde -
One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.
Oscar Wilde -
A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.
Oscar Wilde -
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.
Oscar Wilde -
You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.
Oscar Wilde -
Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful."
Oscar Wilde -
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
Oscar Wilde -
When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.
Oscar Wilde -
In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.
Oscar Wilde -
Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.
Oscar Wilde -
Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.
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 -
I can believe anything provided it is incredible.
Oscar Wilde -
Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.
Oscar Wilde -
Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.
Oscar Wilde -
Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
Oscar Wilde -
They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever.
Oscar Wilde -
To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.
Oscar Wilde -
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.
Oscar Wilde -
Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
Oscar Wilde -
One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.
Oscar Wilde -
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
Oscar Wilde -
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.
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 -
Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.
Oscar Wilde -
We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.
Oscar Wilde -
There are two ways to dislike poetry: One is to dislike it; the other is to read Pope.
Oscar Wilde -
A mask tells us more than a face.
Oscar Wilde -
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
Oscar Wilde -
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
Oscar Wilde -
Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.
Oscar Wilde -
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
Oscar Wilde -
I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
Oscar Wilde -
The worst vice of a fanatic is his sincerity
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 moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.
Oscar Wilde -
The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy.
Oscar Wilde -
When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.
Oscar Wilde -
All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.
Oscar Wilde -
No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.
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 -
Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.
Oscar Wilde -
When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.
Oscar Wilde -
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
Oscar Wilde -
By persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation.
Oscar Wilde -
In examinations, the foolish ask questions the wise cannot answer
Oscar Wilde -
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
Oscar Wilde -
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances
Oscar Wilde -
The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.
Oscar Wilde -
Young men want to be faithful, and are not. Old men want to be faithless, and cannot.
Oscar Wilde -
I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
Oscar Wilde -
The best way to enjoy your job is to imagine yourself without one.
Oscar Wilde -
It takes a thoroughly good woman to do a thoroughly stupid thing
Oscar Wilde -
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
Oscar Wilde -
People who love only once in their lives are. . . shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.
Oscar Wilde -
A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Oscar Wilde -
An inordinate passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young
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 -
Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.
Oscar Wilde -
Sin is the only real colour element left in modern life.
Oscar Wilde -
I know not whether Laws be right, Or whether Laws be wrong; All that we know who be in jail Is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, A year whose days are long.
Oscar Wilde -
Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.
Oscar Wilde -
For he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die.
Oscar Wilde -
No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime.
Oscar Wilde -
Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world.
Oscar Wilde -
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.
Oscar Wilde -
To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders...It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.
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 -
Simple pleasures are the last healthy refuge in a complex world.
Oscar Wilde -
A true gentleman is one who is never intentionally rude.
Oscar Wilde -
It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame.
Oscar Wilde -
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
Oscar Wilde -
When a love comes to an end, weaklings cry, efficient ones instantly find another love, and the wise already have one in reserve.
Oscar Wilde -
Tread Lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow.
Oscar Wilde -
But what is the good of friendship if one cannot say exactly what one means? Anybody can say charming things and try to please and to flatter, but a true friend always says unpleasant things, and does not mind giving pain. Indeed, if he is a really true friend he prefers it, for he knows that then he is doing good.
Oscar Wilde -
The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.
Oscar Wilde -
The only beautiful things are the things that do not concern us.
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 -
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 -
True friends stab you in the front.
Oscar Wilde -
Married men are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not.
Oscar Wilde -
Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.
Oscar Wilde -
The tragedy of growing old is not that one is old but that one is young.
Oscar Wilde -
The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.
Oscar Wilde -
The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.
Oscar Wilde -
The best way to make children good is to make them happy.
Oscar Wilde -
A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.
Oscar Wilde -
Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.
Oscar Wilde -
Men become old, but they never become good.
Oscar Wilde -
My great mistake, the fault for which I can’t forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.
Oscar Wilde -
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
Oscar Wilde -
Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
Oscar Wilde -
Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.
Oscar Wilde -
Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.
Oscar Wilde -
Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.
Oscar Wilde -
Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
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 -
The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.
Oscar Wilde -
I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.
Oscar Wilde -
Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.
Oscar Wilde -
America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
Oscar Wilde -
The modern sympathy with invalids is morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others.
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 -
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
Oscar Wilde -
Philanthropy [has become] simply the refuge of people who wish to annoy their fellow creatures.
Oscar Wilde -
An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship.
Oscar Wilde -
It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.
Oscar Wilde -
I can sympathize with everything, except suffering.
Oscar Wilde -
It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.
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 -
Marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men disagree.
Oscar Wilde -
The secret to life is to enjoy the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.
Oscar Wilde -
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
Oscar Wilde -
It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously
Oscar Wilde -
Beauty is a form of genius - is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It 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.
Oscar Wilde