Oscar Wilde Quotes on Life (76 Quotes)

I don't play accurately--any one can play accurately--but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life.

You have always told me it was Ernest. I have introduced you to every one as Ernest. You answer to the name of Ernest. You look as if your name was Ernest. You are the most earnest-looking person I ever saw in my life. It is perfectly absurd your saying that your name isn't Ernest.

He was trying to gather up the scarlet threads of life and weave them into a pattern; to find his way through the sanguine labyrinth of passion through which he was wandering.

I am not laughing, Dorian; at least I am not laughing at you. But you should not say the greatest romance of your life. You should say the first romance of your life. You will always be loved, and you will always be in love with love. A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the idle classes of a country. Don't be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for you. This is merely the beginning.

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

Many people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honor.

No theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself

The aim of life is self-development. To realise one's nature perfectly-that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked.

Yes, very sensible... People die of common sense, Dorian, one lost moment at a time. Life is a moment. There is no hereafter. So make it burn always with the hardest flame.

You, who know all the secrets of life, tell me how to charm Sibyl Vane to love me! I want to make Romeo jealous, I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.

The great things in life are what they seem to be. And for that reason, strange as it may sound to you, often are very difficult to interpret (understand). Great passions are for the great of souls. Great events can only be seen by people who are on a level with them. We think we can have our visions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing visions have to be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine.

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.

From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it.

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.

Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a mauvais quart d'heure made up of exquisite moments.

Life Life Don't let us go to life for our fulfillment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit . . .

The great events of life often leave one unmoved they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion.

I know, of course, how important it is not to keep a business engagement, if one wants to retain any sense of the beauty of life.

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

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

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

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.

Life would be dull without them.

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

Good taste is the excuse I have given for leading such a bad life.

Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as ofte

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

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

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

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.

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

The supreme object of life is to live. Few people live. It is true life only to realize one's own perfection, to make one's every dream a reality.

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

Youth There is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in Life's lumber-room. But youth is the Lord of Life. Youth has a kingdom waiting for it. Every one is born a king, and most people die in exile.

I was disappointed in Niagara --most people must be disappointed in Niagara. Every American bride is taken there, and the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life.

As a wicked man I am a complete failure. Why, there are lots of people who say I have never really done anything wrong in the whole course of my life. Of course they only say it behind my back.

A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life.

The secret of life is in art.

Here is the first passionate love-letter I have ever written in my life. Strange, that my first passionate love-letter should have been addressed to a dead girl. Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent people we call the dead

I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming pe.

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.

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

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

He rides in the row at ten o clock in the morning, goes to the Opera three times a week, changes his clothes at least five times a day, and dines out every night of the season. You don't call that leading an idle life, do you.

It is sweet to dance to violins When Love and Life are fair To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes Is delicate and rare But it is not sweet with nimble feet To dance upon the air.

A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life.

All trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are sentences of death.

Newspapers. . . give us the bald, sordid, disgusting facts of life. They chronicle, with degrading avidity, the sins of the second-rate, and with the conscientiousness of the illiterate give us accurate and prosaic details. . .

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

A kiss may ruin a human life.