Oscar Wilde - Quotes 301-400
Alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, may produce all the effects of drunkenness.
Oscar Wilde
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
Oscar Wilde
Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.
Oscar Wilde
Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.
Oscar Wilde
If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-eduacated.
Oscar Wilde
I analyzed you, though you did not adore me.
Oscar Wilde
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
Oscar Wilde
Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful.
Oscar Wilde
America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
Oscar Wilde
Irony is wasted on the stupid.
Oscar Wilde
If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want.
Oscar Wilde
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
Oscar Wilde
I beg your pardon I didn't recognise you - I've changed a lot.
Oscar Wilde
I don't think there is a woman in the world who would not be a little flattered if one made love to her. It is that which makes women so irresistibly adorable.
Oscar Wilde
I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If ever I get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.
Oscar Wilde
Truth is independent of facts always.
Oscar Wilde
The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.
Oscar Wilde
I have no objection to anyone's sex life as long as they don't practice it in the street and frighten the horses.
Oscar Wilde
To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.
Oscar Wilde
Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.
Oscar Wilde
Just because a man has died for it, does not make it true.
Oscar Wilde
I like talking to a brick wall - it's the only thing in the world that never contradicts me!
Oscar Wilde
My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
Oscar Wilde
I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.
Oscar Wilde
Women treat us (men) like humanity treats gods - they worship us and keep bothering us to do something.
Oscar Wilde
Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications....The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
Oscar Wilde
Football is all very well as a game for rough girls, but is hardly suitable for delicate boys.
Oscar Wilde
The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving.
Oscar Wilde
If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
Oscar Wilde
One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.
Oscar Wilde
Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.
Oscar Wilde
A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me? I think that it is rather vain.
Oscar Wilde
Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.
Oscar Wilde
Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.
Oscar Wilde
Where there is no love there is no understanding.
Oscar Wilde
No woman should have a memory. Memory in a woman is the beginning of dowdiness. One can always tell from a woman's bonnet whether she has got a memory or not.
Oscar Wilde
When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.
Oscar Wilde
To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.
Oscar Wilde
Wisdom comes with winters.
Oscar Wilde
The rich would have spoken on the value of thrift and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour.
Oscar Wilde
Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.
Oscar Wilde
I am dying beyond my means.
Oscar Wilde
People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.
Oscar Wilde
Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
Oscar Wilde
Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable.
Oscar Wilde
I must say... that I ruined myself: and that nobody, great or small, can be ruined except by his own hand.
Oscar Wilde
It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.
Oscar Wilde
What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.
Oscar Wilde
The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.
Oscar Wilde
If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened. It is simply expression that gives reality to things.
Oscar Wilde
We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.
Oscar Wilde
It's the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Oscar Wilde
The worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.
Oscar Wilde
Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.
Oscar Wilde
Men know life too early. Women know life too late. That is the difference between men and women.
Oscar Wilde
Her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me good.
Oscar Wilde
Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.
Oscar Wilde
I drink to keep body and soul apart.
Oscar Wilde
The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbour with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets.
Oscar Wilde
A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.
Oscar Wilde
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
Oscar Wilde
Thirty-five is a very attractive age; London society is full of women who have of their own free choice remained thirty-five for years.
Oscar Wilde
Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.
Oscar Wilde
Skepticism is the beginning of faith.
Oscar Wilde
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.
Oscar Wilde
The pen is mightier than the paving-stone.
Oscar Wilde
Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is usually Judas who writes the biography.
Oscar Wilde
Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef.
Oscar Wilde
The secret to life is to enjoy the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.
Oscar Wilde
The English novels are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. But one should not be too severe on them. They show a want of knowledge that must be the result of years of study.
Oscar Wilde
It is so easy to convince others; it is so difficult to convince oneself.
Oscar Wilde
I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about it's use. It is hitting below the intellect.
Oscar Wilde
Love is easily killed.
Oscar Wilde
I am the only person I would like to know thoroughly.
Oscar Wilde
She is a peacock in everything but beauty!
Oscar Wilde
One knows so well the popular idea of health: the English country gentleman galloping after a fox - the unspeakable in full pursuit of the unbeatable.
Oscar Wilde
Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.
Oscar Wilde
I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.
Oscar Wilde
To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.
Oscar Wilde
The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial.
Oscar Wilde
It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.
Oscar Wilde
Create yourself. Be yourself your poem.
Oscar Wilde
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
Oscar Wilde
To be really mediaeval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes.
Oscar Wilde
Good taste is the excuse I've always given for leading such a bad life.
Oscar Wilde
Love is not fashionable anymore; the poets have killed it.
Oscar Wilde
When the prurient and the impotent attack you, be sure you are right.
Oscar Wilde
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
Oscar Wilde
I am happy in my prison of passion.
Oscar Wilde
I am getting rather astonishing in my Italian conversation. I believe I talk a mixture of Dante and the worst modern slang.
Oscar Wilde
The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.
Oscar Wilde
Each man kills the thing he loves.
Oscar Wilde
I never take any notice to what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do.
Oscar Wilde
The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.
Oscar Wilde
To get into the best society, nowadays, one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people - that is all!
Oscar Wilde
The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.
Oscar Wilde
I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.
Oscar Wilde
I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can't go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.
Oscar Wilde
No object is so beautiful that under certain conditions it won't look ugly.
Oscar Wilde
A man who takes himself too seriously will find that no one else takes him seriously.
Oscar Wilde
