OSCAR WILDE Quotes

"A different language is a different vision of life." ~Oscar Wilde

"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world." ~Oscar Wilde

“A flower blossoms for its own joy." ~Oscar Wilde

"A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her." ~Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish poet and dramatist.

"A man who can dominate a London dinner table can dominate the world."~Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"A man who does not think for himself does not think at all." ~Oscar Wilde

"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

"A man who marries his mistress leaves a vacancy in that position." ~Oscar Wilde

"A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is invariably plain." ~CECIL GRAHAM from Oscar Wilde's "Lady Windermere's Fan"

“A mist makes things wonderful.” ~Oscar Wilde

"A poet can survive everything but a misprint." ~Oscar Wilde

"A thing isn't necessarily true just because a man died for it." ~Oscar Wilde

"A true gentleman is one who is never unintentionally rude." ~Oscar Wilde

"Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless." ~"Lady Windermere from "Lady Windermere's Fan" by 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." ~from "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime" by Oscar Wilde

"After the first glass of absinthe you see things as you wish they were. After the second you see them as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world." ~Oscar Wilde

"All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster's autobiography." ~Oscar Wilde

"All beautiful things belong to the same age." ~from PEN, PENCIL AND POISON: A Study in Green by Oscar Wilde (Originally in Fortnightly review (January 1889)

“All the spring may be hidden in the single bud,
and the low ground nest of the lark may hold
the joy that is to herald the feet
of many rose-red dawns.”
~Oscar Wilde

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." ~Oscar Wilde

"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all." ~Gilbert from "THE CRITIC AS ARTIST: With Some Remarks Upon the Importance of Doing Nothing" by Oscar Wilde

"Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend's success." ~Oscar Wilde

"Anyone can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success." ~Oscar Wilde, "Sebastian Melmoth"

"Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known." ~Oscar Wilde

"As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied." ~Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Anglo-Irish playwright, author.

"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." ~Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Beauty is a form of genius - is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon." ~Oscar Wilde

"Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity." ~Oscar Wilde from "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young

"Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship." ~Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish poet and dramatist.

"Costume is a growth, an evolution, and a most important, perhaps the most important, sign of the manners, customs, and mode of life of each century." ~Oscar Wilde

"Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people." ~Oscar Wilde

“Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation” ~Oscar Wilde

"Disobedience in the eyes of anyone who has read history is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made--through disobedience and rebellion." ~Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Do not be afraid of the past. If people tell you it is irrevocable, do not believe them. The past, the present and future are but one moment in the sight of God. Time and space are merely accidental conditions of thought. The imagination can transcend them." ~from DE PROFUNDIS by Oscar Wilde

"Don't let us go to life for our fulfilment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence or form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic and critical temperament." ~Oscar Wilde

"Education is an admirable thing,  but it is well to remember from time to time THAT NOTHING THAT IS WORTH KNOWING CAN BE TAUGHT." ~Oscar Wilde, (1854 - 1900), Irish poet and playwright 

"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter." ~Oscar Wilde

"Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future." ~Oscar Wilde

"Everyone is born a king, and most people die in exile, like most kings." -Oscar Wilde

"Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing." ~Oscar Wilde

"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes." ~Oscar Wilde 

"Experience is the hardest kind of teacher.  It gives you the best test first 

and the lesson afterward." ~Oscar Ward 

"Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely a name men gave to their mistakes." ~Lord Henry from "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

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

"Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer." ~Oscar Wilde

"Good intentions have been the ruin of the world. The only people who have achieved anything have been those who have had no intentions at all." -Oscar Wilde

"Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do." ~Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

“He is fond of being misunderstood. It gives him a post of vantage.” ~Oscar Wilde's stage notes on Lord Arthur Goring from "An Ideal Husband"

“He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realise." ~Oscar Wilde

"He to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives." ~Oscar Wilde

"He who stands most remote from his age is he who mirrors it best." ~Oscar Wilde

"I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself." ~Lord Goring from "An Ideal Husband" (1895) by Oscar Wilde

"I am not in favour of this modern mania for turning bad people into good people at a moment's notice. As a man sows so let him reap." ~Miss Prism from "The Importance of Being Earnest" (Act II)

"I am not quite sure that I quite know what pessimism really means. All I do know is that life cannot be understood without much charity, cannot be lived without much charity." ~Oscar Wilde

"I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws." ~Oscar Wilde

"I am so clever that sometimes I do not understand a single word of what I am saying." ~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.” ~from "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

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

"I don't at all like knowing what people say of me behind my back. It makes me far too conceited." ~Oscar Wilde

“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 from "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

"I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best." ~Oscar Wilde

"I like men who have a future and women who have a past." ~Lord Henry from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

"I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about." ~Oscar Wilde

"I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do — the day after." ~Oscar Wilde

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.” ~Gwendolen from "The Importance of Being Earnest"

"I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works." ~Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (Oscar Wilde from a conversation with André Gide)

"I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything." ~Duchess from "The Duchess of Padua" by Oscar Wilde

"I think it's very healthy to spend time alone. You need to learn how to be alone and not be defined by another person." ~Oscar Wilde

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again." ~Oscar Wilde

“If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.” ~Mrs Cheveley from "An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde

"If you are going to tell people the truth, you had better make them laugh or they will kill you." ~Oscar Wilde

"If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life." ~Oscar Wilde

"If you don't get everything you want, think of the things that you don't get that you don't want." ~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, Lord Darlington from Lady Windmere's Fan"

“'If you want a red rose,' said the Tree, 'you must build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with your own heart’s-blood. You must sing to me, and the thorn must pierce your heart, and your life-blood must flow into my veins, and become mine'.” ~from "The Nightingale and the Rose" by Oscar Wilde

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you." ~Oscar Wilde

"If you wish to understand others you must intensify your own individualism." ~Gilbert, from THE CRITIC AS ARTIST (Part II), by Oscar Wilde

"Illusion is the first of all pleasures." ~Oscar Wilde

"In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it." ~Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you." ~Oscar Wilde

“Irony is wasted on the stupid” ~Oscar Wilde

"It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously." ~Oscar Wilde

"It is a great mistake for men to give up paying compliments, for when they give up saying what is charming, they give up thinking what is charming." ~Oscar Wilde, 1998/mpw

"It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names
to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions, my one
quarrel is with words. That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in
literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for." ~Lord Henry Wotton from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious." ~Oscar Wilde

"It is always painful to part with people whom one has known for a very brief space of time. The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity. But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable." ~Oscar Wilde

"It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is fatal." ~Oscar Wilde

"It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don't mind hard work when there is no definite object of any kind." ~Oscar Wilde

"It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way." ~Oscar Wilde

"It is most dangerous nowadays for a husband to pay any attention to his wife in public. It always makes people think that he beats her when they're alone. The world has grown so suspicious of anything that looks like a happy married life." ~Oscar Wilde

"It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man's deeper nature is soon found out." ~Oscar Wilde

"It is so easy for people to have sympathy with suffering. It is so difficult for them to have sympathy with thought." ~from THE CRITIC AS ARTIST by Oscar Wilde

"It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection." ~Oscar Wilde 

"It is very painful for me to be forced to speak the truth. It is the first time in my life that I have ever been reduced to such a painful position, and I am really quite inexperienced in doing anything of the kind." ~Jack Worthing from "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde

"It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone and can be made as offensive as a brickbat." ~Oscar Wilde

"Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and a richness to life that nothing else can bring." ~Oscar Wilde

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

"Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing." ~Oscar Wilde

"Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves and fibres and slowly built-up cells, in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams." ~from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

"Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other." ~Oscar Wilde

"Life is terribly deficient in form. Its catastrophes happen in the wrong way and to the wrong people. There is a grotesque horror about its comedies, and its tragedies seem to culminate in farce. One is always wounded when one approaches it. Things last either too long or not long enough." -from THE CRITIC AS ARTIST by Oscar Wilde

"Man is a being with myriad lives and myriad sensations, a complex, multiform creature that bears within itself strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh is tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead." ~Oscar Wilde

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." ~Oscar Wilde

"Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.” ~Oscar Wilde

"Mediæval art is charming, but mediæval emotions are out of date. One can use them in fiction, of course; but then the only things that one can use in fiction are the only things that one has ceased to use in fact." ~Lord Henry in The Picture of Dorian Gray

"Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us." ~Oscar Wilde

“Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a mans last romance.” ~Oscar Wilde

"Men always want to be a woman's first love. Women have a more subtle instinct. What they like is to be a man's last romance." ~Oscar Wilde

"Men are such cowards. They outrage every law in the world and are afraid of the world's tongue." ~Oscar Wilde

"Men become old, but they never become good." ~Oscar Wilde

"Men can love what is beneath them--things unworthy, stained, dishonoured. We women worship when we love; and when we lose our worship we lose everything." ~Oscar Wilde (LadyChiltern from "An Ideal Husband")

"Men know life too early; women know life too late--that is the difference between men and women." ~Oscar Wilde

“Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways." ~Oscar Wilde

"Misfortunes one can endure, they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's faults--ah! there is the sting of life." ~Oscar Wilde

"Moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a feast." ~Lord Henry to Lady Ruxton in The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

"Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace." ~Oscar Wilde

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." ~Oscar Wilde

"Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined oneself over poetry is an honour." ~Oscar Wilde

"Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense and discover too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes'." ~from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

"Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays." ~Oscar Wilde

"Never love anybody who treats you like you're ordinary." ~Oscar Wilde

"No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." ~Oscar Wilde from The Preface to "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

"No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything." ~Oscar Wilde from Preface to THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

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

“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.” ~Oscar Wilde on Senses

"Nothing is so aggravating as calmness. There is something positively brutal about the good temper of most modern men. I wonder we women stand it as well as we do." ~Mrs. Allonby from "A Woman of No Importance" by Oscar Wilde

"Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern. One is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly." ~Mrs. Markby from "An Ideal Husband" by Oscar Wilde

"Nowadays people seem to look on life as a speculation. It is not a speculation. It is a sacrament. Its ideal is love. Its purification is sacrifice." ~Lady Windermere from "Lady Windermere's Fan" (Oscar Wilde)

"One can survive everything nowadays except death." ~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

"One should absorb the color of life." ~Oscar Wilde

"One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards." ~Oscar Wilde

"One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged." ~Oscar Wilde

"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast." ~Oscar Wilde

"Optimism begins in a broad grin, and Pessimism ends with blue spectacles. Besides, they are both of them merely poses." ~Mrs Cheveley from "An Ideal Husband" by Oscar Wilde

"Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you." ~Oscar Wilde

"Out of ourselves we can never pass, nor can there be in creation what in the creator was not." ~Oscar Wilde

"People seldom tell the truths that are worth telling. We ought to choose our truths as carefully as we choose our lies and to select our virtues with as much thought as we bestow upon the selection of our enemies." ~Oscar Wilde

"Pleasure is the only thing one should live for, nothing ages like happiness."
~Oscar Wilde

"Politics are my only pleasure. You see nowadays it is not fashionable to flirt till one is forty or to be romantic till one is forty-five, so we poor women who are under thirty, or say we are, have nothing open to us but politics or philanthropy. And philanthropy seems to me to have become simply the refuge of people who wish to annoy their fellow-creatures. I prefer politics. I think they are more... becoming." ~Oscar Wilde, MRS CHEVELEY from "An Ideal Husband"

"Public and private life are different things. They have different laws and move on different lines." ~Sir Robert Chiltern, from "An Ideal Husband" by Oscar Wilde
"Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic." ~Oscar Wilde, "The Model Millionaire"

"Scepticism is the beginning of Faith." ~Oscar Wilde

"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live: and unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone, not interfering with them." ~Oscar Wilde

"Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow." ~Oscar Wilde

"She lives the poetry she cannot write." ~Oscar Wilde

"Society often forgives the criminal, it never forgives the dreamer." ~Oscar Wilde, from "The Critic as Artist"

“Society takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling punishment on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realise what it has done. When the man’s punishment is over, it leaves him to himself; that is to say, it abandons him at the very moment when its highest duty towards him begins. It is really ashamed of its own actions, and shuns those whom it has punished, as people shun a creditor whose debt they cannot pay, or one on whom they have inflicted an irreparable, an irremediable wrong.” ~from "De Profundis" (Oscar Wilde)

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go." ~Oscar Wilde

"Sooner or later we have all to pay for what we do." ~Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction." ~from THE DECAY OF LYING by Oscar Wilde

"The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for." ~Oscar Wilde

"The basis of every scandal is an absolute immoral certainty." ~Oscar Wilde

"The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic." ~Oscar Wild

"The difference between journalism and literature is that journalism is un-readable and literature is not read." ~Oscar Wilde

"The English can't stand a man who is always saying he is in the right, but they are very fond of a man who admits he has been in the wrong. It is one of the best things in them." ~Oscar Wilde

“The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star; there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?” ~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.” ~from DE PROFUNDIS by Oscar Wilde

"The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism." ~from The Soul of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde

“The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one’s heart—hearts are made to be broken—but that it turns one’s heart to stone.” ~from DE PROFUNDIS by Oscar Wilde

"le mystère de l'amour est plus grand que le mystère de la mort."
("The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.") ~from "Salomé" (1893) by Oscar Wilde

"The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything." ~Oscar Wilde

"The only artists I have ever known, who are personally delightful, are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not live." ~Lord Henry Wotton from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

"The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated." ~Oscar Wilde

"The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself." ~Oscar Wilde

"The only thing worse then being talked about is not being talked about." ~Oscar Wilde

"The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life." ~Lord Henry from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it." ~Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"The people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failure." ~Oscar Wilde from The Picture of Dorian Gray

"The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing." ~Oscar Wilde

"The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid of ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror." ~Oscar Wilde

"The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived." ~Oscar Wilde

"The soul is born old, but grows young. That is the comedy of life. The body is born young, and grows old. That is life's tragedy." ~Oscar Wilde

"The state is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful." ~Oscar Wilde

"The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young." ~Oscar Wilde

"The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible." ~Oscar Wilde

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple." ~Oscar Wilde

"The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves." ~Oscar Wilde

"The world has been made by fools that wise men may live in it." ~Oscar Wilde

"The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life." ~Oscar Wilde

“The worst vice of a fanatic is his sincerity.” ~Oscar Wilde

"There are moments when art attains almost to the dignity of manual labor." ~Oscar Wilde

"There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life fully, entirely, completely, or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands." ~Lord Darlington, from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde

"There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing." ~Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

"There is luxury in self reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us." ~Oscar Wilde

"There is nothing so absolutely pathetic as a really fine paradox. The pun is the clown among jokes, the well-turned paradox is the polished comedian, and the highest comedy verges upon tragedy, just as the keenest edge of tragedy is often tempered by a subtle humour." ~Oscar Wilde writing as Sebastian Melmoth

"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. That is the misery of being poor." ~from THE SOUL OF MAN

"Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob. It is through the voice of one crying in the wilderness that the way of the gods must be prepared." ~Oscar Wilde

"To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up." ~Oscar Wilde

"To be really mediæval 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

“To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.” ~Oscar Wilde, from "De Profundis"

"To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect." ~Oscar Wilde

“To give and not expect return, that is what lies at the heart of love.” ~Oscar Wilde

"To know everything about oneself one must know all about others." ~Oscar Wilde

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." ~Oscar Wilde

"To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance" ~Oscar Wilde

"To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist. The problem is entirely the same in both cases: to know how much oil one must put with one’s vinegar." ~Oscar Wilde

"To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less." ~Oscar Wilde

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." ~Oscar Wilde

"We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities." ~Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

"We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow." ~Oscar Wilde

"What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise." ~Oscar Wilde

"We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful." ~Lord Henry from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

"When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs." ~from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

"When I am in trouble eating is the only thing that consoles me. Indeed, when I am in really great trouble, as anyone who knows me intimately will tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink. At the present moment I am eating rnufifins because I am unhappy. Besides, I am particularly fond of muffins." ~Algernon "Algy" Moncrieff from "The Importance of Being Earnest"

“When it rains look for rainbows. When it’s dark look for the stars.” ~Oscar Wilde

"When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her." ~Oscar Wilde to a reporter

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

"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." ~Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Who, being loved, is poor?" ~Oscar Wilde

"With freedom, books, flowers and the moon, who could not be happy?" ~Oscar Wilde

"With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." ~from THE SOUL OF MAN UNDER SOCIALISM by Oscar Wilde

"Woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends by blocking his retreat." ~Oscar Wilde

"Yes, I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world." ~Oscar Wilde

"Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!" ~Dorian Gray from THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY by Oscar Wilde

"Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!"
~from "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" (1898) by Oscar Wilde

"You can never be overdressed or overeducated.” ~Oscar Wilde

“You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes or their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear." ~Oscar Wilde

"You forget that a thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it." ~Oscar Wilde

"Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot." ~Oscar Wilde

"Your mother is a thoroughly good woman. But good women have such limited views of life, their horizon is so small, their interests are so petty, aren't they?" ~Oscar Wilde (LORD ILLINGWORTH to GERALD in "A Woman of No Importance")

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FROM HIS BOOKS

"The only thing that the artist cannot see is the obvious. The only thing that the public can see is the obvious. The result is the Criticism of the Journalist." ~from "A Few Maxims For The Instruction Of The Over-Educated" (1894) by Oscar Wilde

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Today is the 160th anniversary of Oscar Wilde's birth. Celebrate with some of his best quips.

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

2. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

3. Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

4. It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

5. The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.

6. Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

7. What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

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

9. 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.

10. There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

11. Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

12. Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

13. True friends stab you in the front.

14. All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

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

16. There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

17. Genius is born—not paid.

18. Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

19. 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?

20. A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.

21. My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people’s.

22. The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

23. I like men who have a future and women who have a past.

24. There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.

25. Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.

And one bonus quote about Oscar Wilde!

"If, with the literate, I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it."
~Dorothy Parker said it best in a 1927 issue of Life:

Source: Mental Floss
17 October 2014

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POETRY

"REQUIESCAT" by Oscar Wilde

READ lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.

All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.

Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.

Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast,
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.

Peace, peace, she cannot hear
Lyre or sonnet,
All my life's buried here,
Heap earth upon it.

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"Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!"
~From "De Profundis" (1897) by Oscar Wilde

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THANK YOU

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