Oscar Wilde Quotes

I am not in favour of this modern mania for turning bad people into good people at a moment's notice.

Her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me good.

He hasn't an enemy in the world, and none of his friend like him.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm.

I have always been of the opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.

I am a born antinomian. I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes.

I have a simple taste, only the best.

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance.

Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses.

Only love can keep anyone alive.

To be good is to be in harmony with oneself. Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others.

Poor? What does that matter? When poverty creeps in at the door, love flies in through the window.

Sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of sympathy in the world, sympathy with pain does not really diminish the amount of pain.

They have been eating muffins. That looks like repentance

I didn't say I liked it Harry. I said it fascinated me. There is a great difference.

The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all.

She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm.

A grapefruit is just a lemon that saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.

LADY BRACKNELL: Do you smoke? JACK: Well, yes, I must admit I smoke. LADY BRACKNELL: I'm glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind.

In fact, I am never wrong.

One must have some sort of occupation nowadays. If I hadn't my debts I shouldn't have anything to think about.

Only people who look dull ever get into the House of Commons, and only people who are dull ever succeed there.

The poet is the supreme artist, for he is the master of colour and of form, and the real musician besides, and is lord over all life and all arts.

Civilization is not by means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.

In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.

I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience.

Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they're better.

It is exactly because a man cannot do a thing that he is a proper judge of it

In married life three is company and two none.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

Oh, don't cough, Ernest. When one is dictating one should speak fluently and not cough. Besides, I don't know how to spell a cough.

Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval.

It is personalities not principles that move the age.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colorless. By its curiosity Sin increases the experience of the race. Through its intensified assertion of individualism it saves us from monotony of type. In its rejection of the current notions about morality, it is one with the higher ethics.

It is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought.

Now and then it is a joy to have one's table red with wine and roses.

It is a vulgar error to suppose that America was ever discovered. It was merely detected.

The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true. That is the fatality of faith, and the lesson of romance.

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.

Nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion.

It is very vulgar to talk about one's own business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then only at dinner parties.

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

My desire to live is as intense as ever, and though my heart is broken, hearts are made to be broken: that is why God sends sorrow into the world.

I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose.

They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about.