Oscar Wilde Quotes

Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

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

Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

I am not young enough to know everything.

The heart was made to be broken.

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

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

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

The very essence of romance is uncertainty.

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

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

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.

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

I can resist everything except temptation.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

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

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

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

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

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

Who, being loved, is poor?

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

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

I have nothing to declare except my genius.

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

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

Anyone can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend's success.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

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

I like men who have a future and women who have a past.

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

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

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

Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.

There is no sin except stupidity.

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

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

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.

Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

Life is too short to learn German

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

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

Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won't be invited to cocktail parties.

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

The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.

Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.

He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.

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

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

Only the shallow know themselves.

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

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.

All art is quite useless.

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

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

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.

The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.

Consistency is the hallmark of the unimaginative.

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

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

Everything popular is wrong.

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

She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm.

One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.

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

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

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.

Punctuality is the thief of time

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

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.

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

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

I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

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

Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

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

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

I love to talk about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about.

Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered.

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.

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

nothing that is worth knowing can be taught

What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise

Experience is a question of instinct about life.

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

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

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.

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

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.

To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.

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

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

A kiss may ruin a human life

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

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

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

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

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

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

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

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

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

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

A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.

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

You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.

Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful."

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

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

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.

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

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

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

I can believe anything provided it is incredible.

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

Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.

Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever.

To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.

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.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

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.

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.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.

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

A mask tells us more than a face.

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

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

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

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

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

The worst vice of a fanatic is his sincerity

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

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

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.

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

All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.

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

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

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

When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.

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

By persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation.

In examinations, the foolish ask questions the wise cannot answer

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

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances

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

Young men want to be faithful, and are not. Old men want to be faithless, and cannot.

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

The best way to enjoy your job is to imagine yourself without one.

It takes a thoroughly good woman to do a thoroughly stupid thing

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

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.

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

An inordinate passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young

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.

Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.

Sin is the only real colour element left in modern life.

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.

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

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

No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime.

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.

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.

To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders...It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.

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

Simple pleasures are the last healthy refuge in a complex world.

A true gentleman is one who is never intentionally rude.

It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame.

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

When a love comes to an end, weaklings cry, efficient ones instantly find another love, and the wise already have one in reserve.

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

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.

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

The only beautiful things are the things that do not concern us.

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.

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.

True friends stab you in the front.

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

Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.

The tragedy of growing old is not that one is old but that one is young.

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

The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.

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

A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.

Men become old, but they never become good.

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.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

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

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

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

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.

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

The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philanthropy [has become] simply the refuge of people who wish to annoy their fellow creatures.

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

It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.

I can sympathize with everything, except suffering.

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.

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.

Marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men disagree.

The secret to life is to enjoy the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.

When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.

It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously

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.