Oscar Wilde Quotes

Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.

History is only gossip.

The Number our envious Persons, confirmation our capability.

It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done.

It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.

Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.

Personally, I have a great admiration for stupidity.

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

God grant me the serenity to accept that people are ignorant, the courage to uphold the law when I'm hostile, & the wisdom to realize that murder is illegal.

Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me?

The key to making up Oscar Wilde quotes is to add '~ Oscar Wilde' at the end.

I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses anyone for asking any question - simple curiosity.

I am a man of simple pleasures. The best suits me perfectly.

What art seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.

the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.

History is merely gossip

Pleasures may turn a heart to stone, riches may make it callous, but sorrows cannot break it. Hearts live by being wounded.

Intuition is a strange instinct that tells a woman she is right, whether she is or not.

The job of the critic is to report to us his moods.

It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.

My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect---simply a confession of failures. Faithfulness! I must analyse it some day. The passion for property is in it. There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up. But I don't want to interrupt you. Go on with your story.

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.

Consistency is the hallmark of the unimaginative.

In England ... education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and would probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.

Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable

All art is quite useless.

There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature, that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination, and disobedience its charm.

Common sense is the enemy of Romance :P:P

Man is many things, but he is not rational.

There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was a real joy in that - perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims.

Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.

Don't run down dyed hair and painted faces. There is an extraordinary charm in them, sometimes.

Life is too short to learn German

In war," answered the weaver, "the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor. We must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die. We toil for them all day long, and they heap up gold in their coffers, and our children fade away before their time, and the faces of those we love become hard and evil. We tread out the grapes, another drinks the wine. We sow the corn, and our own board is empty. We have chains, though no eye beholds them; and are slaves, though men call us free.

All modes of government are failures. Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies are unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. It has been found out. I must say that it was high time, for all authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised.

That very concentration of vision and intensity of purpose which is the characteristic of the artistic temperament is in itself a mode of limitation. To those who are preoccupied with the beauty of form nothing else seems of much importance.

Freedom, individualism and being yourself so long as you don't hurt another's physical person or property: The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself.

Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given away. The ruby shall be redder than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as the great sea.

I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

Imagination is imitative-the real innovation lies in criticism.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn't know the market place of any single thing.

A true gentleman is one who is never intentionally rude.

Be happy, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart's-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty.

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

The reason we are so pleased to find other people's secrets is that it distracts public attention from our own.

The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.

He made me see what Life is, and what Death signifies, and why Love is stronger than both.