Oscar Wilde Quotes on Man (87 Quotes)

To him, man was a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex multiform creature that bore within itself strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh was tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead.

We all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. 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. The thoroughly well-informed man - that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

We women, as some one says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes...

What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than begin talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion.

When they entered they found, hanging upon the wall, a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognised who it was.

Oh! I don't think I would like to catch a sensible man. I shouldn't know what to talk to him about.

Any man can be happy with any woman, so long as he doesn't love her.

I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.

It is quite true that I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man usually gives to a friend. Somehow, I had never loved a woman. I suppose I never had time. Perhaps, as Harry says, a really grande passion is the privilege of those who have nothing to do, and that is the use of the idle classes in a country

Man is many things, but he is not rational.

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

If you meet at dinner a man who has spent his life in educating himself you rise from the table richer, and conscious that a high ideal has for a moment touched and sanctified your days.

The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action.

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

His work was that curious mixture of bad painting and good intentions that always entitles a man to be called a representative British artist.

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

The nineteenth century is a turning point in history, simply on account of the work of two men, Darwin and Renan, the one the critic of the Book of Nature, the other the critic of the books of God.

The mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-

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.

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

It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.

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

The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists of the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

It is exactly because a man cannot do a thing that he is a proper judge of it

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

Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt.

The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream it is a most depressing and humiliating reality.

The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.

Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

The value of an idea has nothing to do with the success of the man who expresses it

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

Men of thought should have nothing to do with action.

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

The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all.

What is said of a man is nothing. The point is, who says it.

I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

By persistently remaining single, a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation. Men should be more careful.

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

Civilisation is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

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

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

Men always want to be a woman's first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We woman have a more subtle instinct about things. What we like is to be a man's last romance.

Formerly we used to canonise our heroes. The modern method is to vulgarise them. Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable.

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

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

The Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions.

One can only give an unbiased opinion about things that do not interest one, which is no doubt the reason an unbiased opinion is always valueless. The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing.

No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.