Oscar Wilde Quotes and Quotations
The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.
The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
(A country where) the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.
Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.
At every single moment of one's life, one is going to be no less than what one has been.
Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
If England treats her criminals the way she has treated me, she doesn't deserve to have any.
When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
He hasn't an enemy in the world, and none of his friends like him.
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes.
The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has the right to blame us.
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.
I am not young enough to know everything.
For he who lives more lives than one, more deaths than one must die.
Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.
Men become old, but they never become good.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
To become the spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.
Pessimist - one who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
A true gentlemen is one who is never unintentionally rude.
Only the shallow know themselves.
It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.
It is not the prisoners who need reformation, it is the prisons.
My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.
Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly.
Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.
Punctuality is the thief of time.
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back again.
I've put my genius into my life; I've only put my talent into my works.
In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
To most of us the real life is the life we do not lead.
When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.
Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Always! That is the dreadful word ... it is a meaningless word, too.
Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibers, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself, and passion has its dreams.
Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.
Pleasure is the only thing to live for. Nothing ages like happiness.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
To be on the alert is to live; to be lulled into security is to die.
The only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.
Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.
Things are in their essence what we choose to make them. A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it.
Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
When a love comes to an end, weaklings cry, efficient ones instantly find another love, and the wise already have one in reserve.
To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
When I was young, I thought money was the most important thing in life. Now that I'm old - I know it is.
The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything.
When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.
By persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation.
Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.
The best way to make children good is to make them happy.
Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword.
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
For he who lives more lives than one More deaths than one must die.
Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
I can believe anything, provided it is incredible.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
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.
Men know life too early, women know life too late.
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read.
Marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men disagree.
Men marry because they are tired, women because they are curious: both are disappointed.
A book or poem which has no pity in it had better not be written.
I know not whether laws be right, Or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol Is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, A year whose days are long.
Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
To get into the best society nowadays, one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people.
To have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact, talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you.
Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
I can resist everything except temptation.
A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can you want?
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
There is no such thing as romance in our day, women have become too brilliant; nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.