Oscar Wilde - Quotes 401-500
The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole.
Oscar Wilde
It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
Oscar Wilde
I approve of any activity that requires the wearing of special clothing.
(When asked what he thought of sports)
Oscar Wilde
Now produce your explanation and pray make it improbable.
Oscar Wilde
I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws.
Oscar Wilde
One's days were too brief to take the burden of another's errors on one's shoulders. Each man lived his own life and paid his own price for living it.
Oscar Wilde
Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.
Oscar Wilde
When bankers get together they talk about art. When artists get together they talk about money.
Oscar Wilde
Literature always anticipates life. It doesn't copy it but moulds it to it's purpose.
Oscar Wilde
No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime.
Oscar Wilde
Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity.
Oscar Wilde
The proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding.
Oscar Wilde
It is not wise to find symbols in everything that one sees. It makes life too full of terrors.
Oscar Wilde
The world is made by the singer for the dreamer.
Oscar Wilde
One should never make one's debut with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest to one's old age.
Oscar Wilde
Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those he has selected.
Oscar Wilde
I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
Oscar Wilde
Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
Oscar Wilde
It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
Oscar Wilde
But what world says that (I'm wicked)? It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent terms.
Oscar Wilde
One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
Oscar Wilde
I am quite incapable of understanding how any work of art can be criticized from a moral standpoint. The sphere of art and the sphere of ethics are absolutely distinct and separate.
Oscar Wilde
If this is the way Queen Victoria treats her prisoners, she doesn't deserve to have any.
Oscar Wilde
Conscience makes egotists of us all.
Oscar Wilde
I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.
Oscar Wilde
Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it.
Oscar Wilde
I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations.
Oscar Wilde
To get back one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies.
Oscar Wilde
In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.
Oscar Wilde
The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing.
Oscar Wilde
All great ideas are dangerous.
Oscar Wilde
People die of common sense.
Oscar Wilde
Life is the art of being well deceived, and to succeed, it must be habitual and uninterrupted.
Oscar Wilde
I never read a book I must review; it prejudices you so.
Oscar Wilde
The only horrible thing in the world is ennui.
Oscar Wilde
The separation of spirit from matter was a mystery and the union of spirit with matter was a mystery also.
Oscar Wilde
Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.
Oscar Wilde
The one charm about the past is that it is the past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen.
Oscar Wilde
It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.
Oscar Wilde
We in the House of Lords are never in touch with public opinion. That makes us a civilised body.
Oscar Wilde
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.
Oscar Wilde
Millionaire models are rare enough; but, by Jove, model millionaires are rarer still!
Oscar Wilde
I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.
Oscar Wilde
There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.
Oscar Wilde
There is a fatality about good resolutions - that they are always made too late.
Oscar Wilde
When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy.
Oscar Wilde
I know. In fact, I am never wrong.
Oscar Wilde
I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself do not interest me. The have not got the charm of novelty.
Oscar Wilde
He hadn’t a single redeeming vice.
Oscar Wilde
I am always late on principle, my principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.
Oscar Wilde
If one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.
Oscar Wilde
Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.
Oscar Wilde
Because sometimes you have to do something bad to do something good.
Oscar Wilde
The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.
Oscar Wilde
My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.
Oscar Wilde
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
Oscar Wilde
If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it in conversation.
Oscar Wilde
The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.
Oscar Wilde
My desire to live is as intense as ever, and though my heart is broken, hearts are made to be broken: that is why God sends sorrow into the world.
Oscar Wilde
They did not understand a single word of what he was saying, but that made no matter, for they put their heads on one side, and looked wise, which is quite as good as understanding a thing, and very much easier.
Oscar Wilde
To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.
Oscar Wilde
Of course married life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.
Oscar Wilde
Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.
Oscar Wilde
Experience is a question of instinct about life.
Oscar Wilde
Every one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling.
Oscar Wilde
In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press.
Oscar Wilde
Would you like to know the great drama of my life? It is that I have put my genius into my life... I have put only my talent into my works.
Oscar Wilde
I would sooner have fifty unnatural vices than one unnatural virtue. It is unnatural virtue that makes the world, for those who suffer, such a premature Hell.
Oscar Wilde
I don't write this letter to put bitterness into your heart, but to pluck it out of mine. For my own sake I must forgive you.
Oscar Wilde
High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
Oscar Wilde
I am not at all cynical, I have merely got experience, which, however, is very much the same thing.
Oscar Wilde
Pleasure is the only thing one should live for, nothing ages like happiness.
Oscar Wilde
I think after Christmas would be better for publication: I am hardly a Christmas present.
Oscar Wilde
Between the famous and the infamous there is but one step, if as much as one.
Oscar Wilde
The unread is always better than the unreadable.
Oscar Wilde
Caricature is the tribute which mediocrity pays to genius.
Oscar Wilde
Even things that are true can be proved.
Oscar Wilde
The public is largely influenced by the look of a book. So are we all. It is the only artistic thing about the public.
Oscar Wilde
It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art.
Oscar Wilde
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.
Oscar Wilde
The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality.
Oscar Wilde
I'm too old to know everything.
Oscar Wilde
Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.
Oscar Wilde
Duty is what one expects from others.
Oscar Wilde
It would leave no room for developments and I intend to develop in many directions.
Oscar Wilde
The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.
Oscar Wilde
In war, the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor.
Oscar Wilde
If people are dishonest once, they will be dishonest a second time. And honest people should keep away from them.
Oscar Wilde
Every impulse we strangle will only poison us.
Oscar Wilde
Do you smoke?
Well, yes, I must admit I smoke.
I'm glad to hear of it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind.
Oscar Wilde
One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.
Oscar Wilde
I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses anyone for asking any question - simple curiosity.
Oscar Wilde
We always misunderstood ourselves, and rarely understood others.
Oscar Wilde
It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us.
Oscar Wilde
I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous.
Oscar Wilde
If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first.
Oscar Wilde
And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.
Oscar Wilde
The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.
Oscar Wilde
It is so beautiful that I am sure it has a long Latin name.
Oscar Wilde
Lean on principles, one day they'll end up giving way.
Oscar Wilde
