Oscar Wilde Quotes (991 Quotes)

It is personalities not principles that move the age.

A subject that is beautiful in itself gives no suggestion to the artist. It lacks imperfection.

Whatever harsh criticisms may be passed on the construction of her sentences, she at least possesses that one touch of vulgarity that makes the whole world kin.

And now, I am dying beyond my means. Sipping champagne on his deathbed

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.

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

The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to someone else, if she is plain.

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

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.

Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.

Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature it requires, in fact, that nature of a true Individualist to sympathize with a friend's success.

It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.

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

Vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people.

I have nothing to declare except my genuis.

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

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

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.

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.

His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be

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

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.

All art is quite useless.

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.

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

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

The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.

Nothing is good in moderation. You cannot know good in anything until you have torn the heart out of it by excess.

Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived

The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.

She tried to found a salon, and only succeeded in opening a restaurant.

Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything, and when they grow older, they know it

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

The Americans are certainly hero-worshippers, and always take their heroes from the criminal classes.

What is mind but motion in the intellectual sphere.

The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.

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

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

The security of Society lies in custom and unconscious instinct, and the basis of the stability of Society, as a healthy organism, is the complete absence of any intelligence amongst its members.

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

As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.

The condition of perfection is idleness the aim of perfection is youth.

An inordinate passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young

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

We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.

My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.

Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.

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 . . .

Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which is never advisable.

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.