Oscar Wilde Quotes

I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you. It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.

We Irish will never achieve anything; but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks

He is fairer than the morning star, and whiter than the moon. For his body I would give my soul, and for his love I would surrender heaven.

From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it.

Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.

The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. ... One might point out how the Renaissance was great, because it sought to solve no social problem, and busied itself not about such things, but suffered the individual to develop freely, beautifully, and naturally, and so had great and individual artists, and great, individual men. One might point out how Louis XIV, by creating the modern state, destroyed the individualism of the artist.

His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion.

Individualism has really the higher aim. Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one's age.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.

When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.

Perhaps there may come into my art also, no less than into my life, a still deeper note, one of greater unity of passion, and directness of impulse. Not width but intensity is the true aim of modern art. We are no longer in art concerned with the type. It is with the exception that we have to do. I cannot put my sufferings into any form they took, I need hardly say. Art only begins where Imitation ends, but something must come into my work, of fuller memory of words perhaps, of richer cadences, of more curious effects, of simpler architectural order, of some aesthetic quality at any rate.

I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.

The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously-and have somebody find out.

A flower blossoms for its own joy.

There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate--not to the artist but to the public.... Without them we would judge a man simply by his work; but at present the newspapers are trying hard to induce the public to judge a sculptor, for instance, never by his statues but by the way he treats his wife; a painter by the amount of his income and a poet by the colour of his necktie.

I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be misunderstood.

Nothing is so aggravating as calmness. There is something positively brutal about the good temper of most modern men.

An actor is part illusionist, part artist, part ham.

Those who have much are often greedy. Those who have little always share.

Then there was a man who said, 'I never knew what real happiness was until I got married; by then it was too late'

Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.

Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.

To know anything about oneself one must know all about others.

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

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

The Bostonians take their learning too sadly: culture with them is an accomplishment rather than an atmosphere; their "Hub," as they call it, is the paradise of prigs.

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

Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. Our Guildensterns play Hamlet for us, and our Hamlets have to jest like Prince Hal. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.

Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything.

If you meet at dinner a man who has spent his life in educating himself - a rare type in our time ... you rise from table richer, and conscious that a high ideal has for a moment touched and sanctified your days. But Oh! my dear Ernest, to sit next to a man who has spent his life in trying to educate others! What a dreadful experience that is!

Death is a great price to pay for a red rose“, cried the Nightingale, "and Life is very dear to all. “ It is pleasant to sit in the green wood, and watch the Sun in his chariot of gold, and the Moon in her chariot of pearl. Sweet is the scent oft he hawthorn, and sweet are the bluebells that hide in the valley, and the heather that blows on the hill. Yet Love is better than Life, and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?

What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb. American novels, answered Lord Henry.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Only the shallow know themselves.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

Any place you love is the world to you.

I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.

There is more to be said for stupidity than people imagine. Personally I have a great admiration for stupidity. It is a sort of fellow-feeling, I suppose.

An opinion is not necesarily correct just because you're willing to die for it.

Books are never finished, They are merely abandoned.

A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.

A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.

Don't give a woman advice; one should never give a woman anything she can't wear in the evening.

Like all people who try to exhaust a subject, he exhausted his listeners.