Oscar Wilde Quotes

I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

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

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.

It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.

In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.

I have nothing to declare except my genius.

The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

Yes, there is a terrible moral in ‚Dorian Gray‘ – a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.

There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

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

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.

Woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.

Only the shallow know themselves.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.

Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.

Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.

I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.

One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating – people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety and strangeness. Good people exasperate one’s reason; bad people stir one’s imagination.

The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

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

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.

In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances, invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.

In judging of a beautiful statue, the aesthetic faculty is absolutely and completely gratified by the splendid curves of those marble lips that are dumb to our complaint, the noble modelling of those limbs that are powerless to help us.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.

Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.

I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.

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

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

Perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for men. There would be more joy in life if we were to accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes.

I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of simple decorative arts. It would be a golden hour to the children.

Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all, you must not strip it of vitality.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.

It is always the unreadable that occurs.

No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.