As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.
Oscar WildeI never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
Oscar WildeThe more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.
Oscar WildeAs long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
Oscar WildeUltimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation, and conversation must have a common basis, and between two people of widely different culture the only common basis possible is the lowest level.
Oscar WildePeople seldom tell the truths that are worth telling. We ought to choose our truths as carefully as we choose our lies and to select our virtues with as much thought as we bestow upon the selection of our enemies.
Oscar WildeAn acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship.
Oscar WildeTell the cook of this restaurant with my compliments that these are the very worst sandwiches in the whole world, and that, when I ask for a watercress sandwich, I do not mean a loaf with a field in the middle of it.
Oscar WildeMost people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar WildeWords! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?
Oscar WildeWomen defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders.
Oscar WildeWomen love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.
Oscar WildeThose who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.
Oscar WildeTo disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.
Oscar WildeI forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the house-tops.
Oscar WildeNature, which makes nothing durable, always repeats itself so that nothing which it makes may be lost.
Oscar WildeThe public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity.
Oscar WildeIn the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.
Oscar WildeEvery prison that men build Is built with bricks of shame, And bound with bars lest Christ should see How men their brothers maim.
Oscar WildeMany people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honor.
Oscar WildeNothing is good in moderation. You cannot know good in anything until you have torn the heart out of it by excess.
Oscar WildeThe best art is about individualism, free self-expression and realising a unique, imaginative perspective- A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public are to him non-existent.
Oscar WildeTo exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.
Oscar WildeChildren start out loving their parents, but as they grow older and discover their parents are human, they become judgmental. And sometimes, when they mature, they forgive their parents, especially when they discover they are also human.
Oscar WildeNo publisher should ever express an opinion of the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide.
Oscar WildeAnd the marvellous rose became crimson, like the rose of the eastern sky. Crimson was the girdle of petals, and crimson as a ruby was the heart
Oscar Wilde