Oscar Wilde Quotes (991 Quotes)

A mask tells us more than a face.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.

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.

Nothing is impossible in Russia but reform.

In fact, the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people. . . . The Japanese people are. . . simply a mode of style, an exquisite fancy of art.

Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

One should never make one's debut with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest to one's old age.

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

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.

Passion makes one think in a circle.

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.

It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.

Action is the last refuge of those who cannot dream.

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.

They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

Life would be dull without them.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

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

One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.

One should never trust a woman who tells her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell anything.

If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want.

Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything.

Children have a natural antipathy to books - handicraft should be the basis of education. Boys and girls should be taught to use their hands to make something, and they would be less apt to destroy and be mischievous.

For he who lives more lives than one More deaths than one must die.

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

Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut the pessimist the hole.

Public Opinion... an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force.

The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.

No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.

Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt.

He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.

The only thing one can do with good advice is pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.

Popularity is the only insult that has not yet been offered to Mr. Whistler.

The final mystery is oneself.

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.

There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.

He hasn't a single redeeming vice.

To influence a person is to give him ones own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one elses music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.

Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us. Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.