Oscar Wilde Quotes

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

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

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But… it is better to be good than to be ugly.

You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

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

As 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.

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.

She is a peacock in everything but beauty.

Hatred is blind, as well as love.

It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.

If one plays good music, people don’t listen and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.

London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce the serious people, or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don’t know.

In married life three is company and two none.

Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

There is no sin except stupidity.

A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

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

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

If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.

Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods. Beauty is the symbol of symbols. Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses nothing. When it shows us itself, it shows us the whole fiery-coloured world.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.

I am not young enough to know everything.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

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

Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.