Oscar Wilde Quotes

Wisdom comes with winters

Men always want to be a woman's first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about things.

While one should always study the method of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely universal. The first personality, which no one should copy.

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

I never take any notice to what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do.

No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

"I hope your hair curls naturally, does it?" "Yes, darling, with a little help from others."

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

Create yourself. Be yourself your poem.

Every woman is a rebel.

I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all.

The best way to enjoy your job is to imagine yourself without one.

The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.

If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you.

If you cannot prove a man wrong, don't panic. You can always call him names.

Christ did not die to save people, but to teach people how to save each other. This is, I have no doubt, a grave heresy, but it is also a fact.

I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.

Schopenhauer has analysed the pessimism that characterize modern thought, but Hamlet invented it

That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.

Don't feed the trolls; nothing fuels them so much.

What fire does not destroy, it hardens

The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married.

Art, like Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous voices.

Well, one must be serious about something, if one wants to have any amusement in life.

Life is terrible. It rules us, we do not rule it.

When people talk to me about the weather, I always feel they mean something else.

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

The only thing that the artist cannot see is the obvious. The only thing that the public can see is the obvious.

America is not a country, it is a world.

You and I will always be friends." "Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that.

Never met such a Gorgon . . . I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair.

Live the wonderful life that is in you.

I can resist anything but the temptation to make a clever witticism.

To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.

Nothing annoys people so much as not receiving invitations.

Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

Caricature is the tribute which mediocrity pays to genius.

It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.

The secret to life is to enjoy the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.

Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs.

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

When asked what he thought of sports, Oscar Wilde replied, "I approve of any activity that requires the wearing of special clothing.

Only the unimaginative can fail to find a reason for drinking Champagne

Never buy a thing you don't want merely because it is dear.

Scepticism is the beginning of Faith.

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and it degrades those over whom it is exercised.

Beauty is a form of genius -- is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation.

The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.