Oscar Wilde quotes

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

• 23
• excellence

A true gentleman is one who is never unintentionally rude.

• 22
• gentlemen

The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.

• 21
• perfection

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

• 20
• america

To love oneself is the beginning of a life long romance.

• 19
• romance

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

• 19
• playgames

One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

• 18
• fantasy

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

• 18
• murder

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.

• 18
• courage

When one pays a visit it is for the purpose of wasting other people's time, not one's own.

• 17
• communism

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.

• 16
• love

A pessimist is one who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.

• 16
• pessimism

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

• 15
• actions

The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

• 15
• attitude

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

• 15
• society

The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

• 15
• contradiction

When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old, I know it is.

• 14
• money

He must have a truly romantic nature, for he weeps when there is nothing at all to weep about.

• 13
• romance

How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?

• 13
• sadness

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

• 13
• friends

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.

• 13
• experience

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

• 13
• face

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

• 13
• soul

I am dying beyond my means.

• 12
• death

Conversation should touch everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing.

• 12
• conversation

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

• 12
• moderation

Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt.

• 11
• housework

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

• 11
• fashion

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

• 11
• actors

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

• 11
• life

Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.

• 11
• identity

There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

• 11
• blame

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

• 11
• children

Experience is the name we give to our mistakes.

• 11
• mistakes

When a man has once loved a woman, he will do anything for her, except continue to love her.

• 11
• love

This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again.

• 10
• authors

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

• 10
• determination

How clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say.

• 10
• hypocrisy

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

• 10
• criticism

When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy.

• 9
• happiness

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

• 9
• gossip

In America, the President reigns for four years, and journalism governs for ever and ever.

• 9
• presidency

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

• 9
• men

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

• 9
• money

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

• 9
• sincerity

I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.

• 9
• humor

An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship.

• 8
• friends

I delight in men over seventy. They always offer one the devotion of a lifetime.

• 8
• age

All that I desire to point out is the general principle that Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.

• 8
• art

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

• 8
• truth

Pleasure is Nature

• 8
• pleasure

The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.

• 8
• psychiatry

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

• 8
• family

Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.

• 8
• death

The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.

• 8
• theater

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

• 8
• romance

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

• 7
• emotions

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

• 7
• books

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

• 7
• punctuality

Skepticism is the beginning of Faith.

• 7
• doubt

There is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.

• 7
• superstition

Imagination is a quality given a man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.

• 7
• imagination

I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.

• 7
• argument

He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone.

• 7
• profanity

To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist -- the problem is entirely the same in both cases. To know exactly how much oil one must put with one's vinegar.

• 7
• cooking

I never saw a man who looked with such a wistful eye upon that little tent of blue which prisoners call the sky.

• 7
• nature

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

• 7
• food

Nowadays, all the married men live like bachelors, and all the bachelors like married men.

• 7
• men

Never speak disrespectfully of Society. Only people who can't get into it do that.

• 7
• society

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

• 6
• fashion

For his mourners will be outcast men, and outcasts always mourn.

• 6
• exile

His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language.

• 6
• authors

If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.

• 6
• truth

If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation.

• 6
• music

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train.

• 6
• diary

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

• 6
• actors

Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.

• 6
• sorrow

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

• 6
• fate

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

• 5
• attitude

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

• 5
• charity

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

• 5
• abstinence

Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

• 5
• women

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune... to lose both seems like carelessness.

• 5
• parenting

It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way.

• 5
• humanity

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

• 5
• absolutely

Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.

• 5
• devotion

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

• 5
• fate

Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman.

• 5
• romance

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

• 5
• loyalty

It is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be good than to be ugly.

• 5
• beauty

Vulgarity is the conduct of other people, just as falsehoods are the truths of other people.

• 5
• profanity

Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.

• 5
• women

While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.

• 4
• actors

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.

• 4
• authors

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

• 4
• recognition

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

• 4
• work

There is no sin except stupidity.

• 4
• sin

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

• 4
• religion

There can be nothing more frequent than an occasional drink.

• 4
• drinking

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

• 4
• humanity

All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.

• 4
• charisma

Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

• 4
• discontent

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.

• 4
• truth

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

• 4
• again

One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed.

• 4
• authors

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

• 4
• security

It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

• 4
• honesty

He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing.

• 4
• silence

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

• 4
• maturity

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.

• 4
• dreams

Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones.

• 4
• crying

Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.

• 4
• taxation

She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.

• 4
• despair

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

• 4
• morality

The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.

• 4
• america

Work is a refuge of people who have nothing better to do.

• 4
• work

To make men Socialists is nothing, but to make Socialism human is a great thing.

• 4
• communism

Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things.

• 3
• tyranny

I have nothing to declare except my genius.

• 3
• genius

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

• 3
• 1897