Oscar Wilde Quotes (991 Quotes)


    Better the rule of One, whom all obey, Than to let clamorous demagogues betray Our freedom with the kiss of anarchy.

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

    We have little time and lots to do, lets take time for everything we do.

    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 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 consciosness, to wake their ashes in pain.


    Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

    What between the duties expected of one during one's lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one's death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up.

    Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.


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

    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.

    In the old times men carried out their rights for themselves as they lived, but nowadays every baby seems born with a social manifesto in its mouth much bigger than itself.

    Real beauty ends where an intellectual expression begins.

    To get back one's youth, one has merely to repeat one's follies.

    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.

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

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

    If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.

    Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob

    Plain women are always jealous of their husbands. Beautiful women never are. They are always so occupied with being jealous of other women's husbands.

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

    While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.

    Whenever cannibals are on the brink of starvation, Heaven, in its infinite mercy, sends them a nice plump missionary

    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.

    Conscience and cowardice are really the same thing.

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

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

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

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

    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.

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

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

    The gods bestowed on Max the gift of perpetual old age.

    He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals.

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

    Lord Darlington (LD) I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules. Lady Windemere (LW) If we had hard-and-fast rules' we would find life much simpler. LD You allow of no exceptions LW None LD Ah, what a fascinating Puritan you are, LW. LW The adjective was unnecessary, LD.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    Scandal gossip made tedious by morality.

    I don't like Switzerland it has produced nothing but theologians and waiters.

    Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night.

    A man who can dominate a London dinner table can dominate the world. The future belongs to the dandy. It is the exquisites who are going to rule.

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

    Experience is the name we give to our past mistakes

    And, by the way, one of the most delightful things I find in America is meeting a people without prejudice -- everywhere open to the truth.

    No, my Lord Cardinal, I weary of her Why, she is worse than ugly, she is good.

    The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all.

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

    Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.


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    William Shakespeare - Tennessee Williams - Oscar Wilde - George Bernard Shaw - Philippe Quinault - Lady Gregory - John Fletcher - Henry Taylor - Hannah Cowley - George Colman


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