Oscar Wilde Quotes

The Americans are certainly hero-worshipers, and always take their heroes from the criminal classes.

The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.

I am sorry my life is so marred and maimed by extravagance. But I cannot live otherwise. I, at any rate, pay the penalty of suffering.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

To be really mediæval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

There are two ways of disliking poetry, one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.

The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.

Conformity is the last refuge of the unimaginitive

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

The sign of a Philistine age is the cry of immorality against art.

Too much work, and no vacation, Deserves at least a small libation. So hail! my friends, and raise your glasses, Work's the curse of the drinking classes.

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.

There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.

Marriage is hardly a thing one can do now and then, except in America.

They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever.

If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.

Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude.

Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved.

That is the mission of art - to make us pause and look at a thing a second time.

Would you like to know the great drama of my life? It is that I have put my genius into my life...I have put only my talent into my works.

Now, nothing should be able to harm a man except himself. Nothing should be able to rob a man at all. What a man really has, is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance.

Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary. When her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief.

Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.

The trouble with the lower classes is that they lack the sense of tragedy given to them by the upper classes.

True friends stab you in the front.

Miss Prism: Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel, Cecily. I wrote one myself in earlier days. Cecily: Did you really, Miss Prism? How wonderfully clever you are! I hope it did not end happily? I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much. Miss Prism: The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

After a good quality dinner one will be able to forgive anybody, still one's own relations.

If we men married the women we deserved, we should have a very bad time of it.

You have always told me it was Ernest. I have introduced you to every one as Ernest. You answer to the name of Ernest. You look as if your name was Ernest. You are the most earnest-looking person I ever saw in my life. It is perfectly absurd your saying that your name isn't Ernest.

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

At twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets.

There can be nothing more frequent than an occasional drink.

I forget what killed it. I think it was her proposing to sacrifice the whole world for me. That is always a dreadful moment. It fills one with the terror of eternity.

Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.

The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought and sold and bartered away.

The nineteenth century is a turning point in history, simply on account of the work of two men, Darwin and Renan, the one the critic of the Book of Nature, the other the critic of the books of God. Not to recognise this is to miss the meaning of one of the most important eras in the progress of the world.

Thin-lipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair, hinted at prudence, quoted from that book of cowardice whose author apes the name of common sense.

Duty is what one expects from others.

Sins of the flesh are nothing. They are maladies for physicians to cure, if they should be cured. Sins of the soul alone are shameful.

And if life be, as it surely is, a problem to me, I am no less a problem to life.

It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.

The value of an idea has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.

It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world

Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices, there are no such things. If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even.

Surely Love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the marketplace. It may not be purchased of the merchants, for can it be weighed out in the balance for gold.