Oscar Wilde Quotes

To be in love is to surpass one's self.

There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation.

The only way to atone for being occasionally overdressed is to be massively overeducated.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. We all have clouds above us but some see their silver linings. We all face difficulties but some of us are grateful that they aren't worse.

No woman should have a memory. Memory in a woman is the beginning of dowdiness. One can always tell from a woman's bonnet whether she has got a memory or not.

People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all.

The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is ridiculous.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.

To shut one's eyes to half of life that one may live securely is as though one blinded oneself that one might walk with more safety in a land of pit and precipice.

Music is the perfect type of art.

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

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.

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

The best work in literature is always done by those who do not depend on it for their daily bread and the highest form of literature, Poetry, brings no wealth to the singer.

Absolute catholicity of taste is not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art.

It is awfully hard work doing nothing.

The only thing in the world worse than being Oscar Wilde is not being Oscar Wilde.

The ugly and 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. They never bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Henry; my brains, such as they are-- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks-- we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.

The final mystery is oneself.

The simplicity of your character makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me.

Sin is the only real colour element left in modern life.

There are only two kinds of women, the plain and the coloured.

I wonder that no criminal has ever pleaded the ugliness of your city as an excuse for his crimes.

If God really wanted to punish, he'd answer all our prayers.

Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don't think it right.

The mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.

There were opium-dens, where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins could be destroyed by the madness of sins that were new.

Bunbury? Oh, he was quite exploded. Exploded! Was he the victim of a revolutionary outrage? I was not aware that Mr. Bunbury was interested in social legislation. If so, he is well punished for his morbidity. My dear Aunt Augusta, I mean he was found out! The doctors found out that Bunbury could not , that is what I mean—so Bunbury died. He seems to have had great confidence in the opinion of his physicians.

What the artist is always looking for is the mode of existence in which soul and body are one and indivisible: in which the outward is expressive of the inward: in which form reveals.

The greatest of all sins is stupidity.

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.

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

Be moderate in all things, including moderation.

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

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

He wants to enslave you.' 'I shudder at the thought of being free.

I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to say so. ... Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible still.

When I ask for a water cress sandwich, I do not mean a loaf with a field in the middle of it.

You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. living, as you all do, on other and by them, you need at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season.

There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.

Love is not fashionable anymore; the poets have killed it.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all.

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

The man with a clear conscience probably has a poor memory.

I have put my talent into writing, my genius I have saved for living.

The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art.