Oscar Wilde Quotes

To look at a thing is very different from seeing it.

The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it.

What is the good of friendship if one cannot say exactly what one means?

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it

Where there is no love there is no understanding.

After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.

A gentleman never offends unintentionally

In a temple everything should be serious except the thing that is being worshiped.

Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. . .

The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.

Each of us has heaven and hell in him.

Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

No art ever survived censorship; no art ever will.

I can't stand people that do not take food seriously.

What do you call a bad man? The sort of man who admires innocence.

As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg

I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.

Because sometimes you have to do something bad to do something good.

I've now realised for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.

Poets know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon.

A person who, because he has corns himself, always treads on other people's toes.

Science is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon eternal truths. Art is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon things beautiful and immortal and ever-changing.

He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afraid, or when we are stirred by some new emotion for which we cannot find expression.

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

For an artist to marry his model is as fatal as for a gourmet to marry his cook: the one gets no sittings, and the other gets no dinners.

Artists reproduce themselves or each other, with wearisome iteration. But criticism is always moving on, and the critic is always developing.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. ...Art is the most intense mode of Individualism that the world has known. I am inclined to say that it is the only real mode of Individualism that the world has known. ...Art is Individualism.

The proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding.

Many of the great achievements of the world were accomplished by tired and discouraged men who kept on working.

Every one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling.

It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man's deeper nature is soon found out.

A man who moralizes is a hypocrite, and a woman who does so is invariably plain.

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

I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else.

Yes, I am a thorough republican. No other form of government is so favorable to the growth of art.

If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture.

She is a peacock in everything but beauty!

I have no objection to anyone's sex life as long as they don't practice it in the street and frighten the horses.

I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world… And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom.

God and other artists are always a little obscure.

His morality is all sympathy, just what morality should be

The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.

When a man does exactly what a woman expects him to do she doesn't think much of him. One should always do what a woman doesn't expect, just as one should say what she doesn't understand.

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

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

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everybody in good society holds exactly the same opinions.