Oscar Wilde Quotes (991 Quotes)

What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

To get into the best society nowadays, one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people.

Pray don't talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else.

Time is waste of money.

He hadn't a single redeeming vice.

Insincerity is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

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

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

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.

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.

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

Good taste is the excuse I have given for leading such a bad life.

The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He is the very basis of civilized society.

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

A misanthrope I can understand - a womanthrope never

Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as ofte

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

I seem to have heard that observation before. . . . It has all the vitality of error and all the tediousness of an old friend.

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted. . .

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

Lots of people act well, but few people talk well. This shows that talking is the more difficult of the two.

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

The best way to make children good is to make them happy.

It (cricket) requires one to assume such indecent postures.

It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame.

The unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.

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

Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity.

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

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature.

You should study the Peerage, Gerald. It is the one book a young man about town should know thoroughly, and it is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done.

Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.

How sad it is I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it was only the other way If it was I who were to be always young, and the picture that were to grow old For this--for this--I would give everything Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give

The way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we must see it on the tight-rope. When the Verities become acrobats we can judge them.

Though one can dine in New York, one could not dwell there.

She is absolutely inadmissible into society. Many a woman has a past, but I am told that she has at least a dozen, and that they all fit.

It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.

Of course I have played outdoor games. I once played dominoes in an open air cafe in Paris.

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.

I have found that all ugly things are made by those who strive to make something beautiful, and that all beautiful things are made by those who strive to make something useful.

Newspapers have degenerated. They may now be absolutely relied upon.

Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak. They a

Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is usually Judas who writes the biography.

The only difference between saints and sinners is that every saint has a past while every sinner has a future.

The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms.

The greatest of all sins is stupidity.

Men of thought should have nothing to do with action.