Oscar Wilde Quotes on World (52 Quotes)

Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be-in other ages, perhaps.

If I could get back my youth, I'd do anything in the world except get up early, take exercise or be respectable.

In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.

It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with yourrose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame…

She is all the great heroines of the world in one.

She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her 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 dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.

The only horrible thing in the world is ennui.

The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.

There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live, undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet.

There was something in his face that made one trust him at once. All the candour of youth was there, as well as youth's passionate purity. One felt that he had kept himself unspotted from the world.

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.

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.

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

What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colourless. By its curiosity Sin increases the experience of the race.

It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.

The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.

We become lovers when we see Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet makes us students. The blood of Duncan is upon our hands, with Timon we rage against the world, and when Lear wanders out upon the heath the terror of madness touches us.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Beauty is a form of geniusis higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, orspringtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon.

An excellent man He hasn't an enemy in the world, and none of his friends like him.

If there is anything in the world more annoying than having people talk about you, it is certainly having no one talk about you.

The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork - Oscar Wilde

Sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of sympathy in the world, sympathy with pain does not really diminish the amount of pain.

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.

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

A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on

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.

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.

When one is in love one always begins by deceiving oneself, and one always ends by deceiving others. This is what the world calls a romance.

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at.

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

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.

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

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Civilization requires slaves. Human slavery is wrong, insecure and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong.

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

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

A visionary is one who can find his way by moonlight, and see the dawn before the rest of the world.

The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.

To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.

How strange a thing this is The Priest telleth me that the Soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver.

Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, the world would have been different.

Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease.

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

There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America.

Missionaries are going to reform the world whether it wants to or not

If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.

There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.