Oscar Wilde Quotes

I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.

The English public always feels perfectly at ease when a mediocrity is talking to it.

Shakespeare might have met Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the white streets of London, or seen the serving-men of rival houses bite their thumbs at each other in the open square; but Hamlet came out of his soul, and Romeo out of his passion.

As a wicked man I am a complete failure. Why, there are lots of people who say I have never really done anything wrong in the whole course of my life. Of course they only say it behind my back.

Veni vidi veni iterum! (I came, I saw, I came again!)

Learn to differentiate between ignorance and stupidity.

Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.

I threw the pearl of my soul into a cup of wine. I went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes. I lived on honeycomb.

The weather still continues charming.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither

Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.

A daughter is a mother's gender partner, her closest ally in the family confederacy, an extension of herself. -Author Unknown As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.

The sin was mine; I did not understand. So now is music prisoned in her cave, Save where some ebbing desultory wave Frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand.

I gave my genius to my life, but my talent to my art.

Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong.

It is art, and art only, that reveals us to ourselves.

I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope.

We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.

Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world. I cannot conceive of any other explanation. I am convinced that there is no other, and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul.

The only thing that ever consoles man for the stupid things he does is the praise he always gives himself for doing them.

I never read a book I must review; it prejudices you so.

Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions." "I hate them for it," cried Hallward. "An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world what is it; and for that the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray.

The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.

When bankers get together they talk about art. When artists get together, they talk about money.

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood. Don't degrade me into the position of giving you useful information. Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

How long could you love a woman who didn't love you, Cecil? A woman who didn't love me? Oh, all my life!

The only link between Literature and the Drama left to us in England at the present moment is the bill of the play.

It is absurd to say that there are neither ruins nor curiosities in America when they have their mothers and their manners.

The trouble with women is, that when they grow up, they turn into their mothers. The trouble with men is, that they don't.

By persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation.

Well, I know, of course, how important it is not to keep a business engagement, if one wants to retain any sense of the beauty of life.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

Life under a good government is rarely dramatic; life under a bad government is always so.

Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Far away beyond the pine-woods,' he answered, in a low dreamy voice, 'there is a little garden. There the grass grows long and deep, there are the great white stars of the hemlock flower, there the nightingale sings all night long. All night long he sings, and the cold, crystal moon looks down, and the yew-tree spreads out its giant arms over the sleepers.

The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden. It ends with Revelations.

I could deny it if I liked. I could deny anything if I liked.

After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.

Niagara Falls is simply a vast unnecessary amount of water going over the wrong way and then falling over unnecessary cliffs...The wonder would be if the water did not fall.

No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.

How clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say.

America is one long expectoration.

Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws.

A subject that is beautiful in itself gives no suggestion to the artist. It lacks imperfection.

Know thyself' was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, 'Be thyself' shall be written.