Top 121 Oscar Wilde Quotes

Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.

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

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.

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

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

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

Writing bores me so.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

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

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

Only the shallow know themselves.

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

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

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.

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

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

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.

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

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

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

In designing the scenery and costumes for any of Shakespeare’s plays, the first thing the artist has to settle is the best date for the drama. This should be determined by the general spirit of the play more than by any actual historical references which may occur in it.

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

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

Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.

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

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

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

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Life imitates art far more than art imitates 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.

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

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.

Women are made to be loved, not understood.

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

Those whom the gods love grow young.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate – not to the artist, but to the public, blinding them to all but harming the artist not at all.

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

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

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

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

A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.

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

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

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

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.

When good Americans die they go to Paris.

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

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

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.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

There is no sin except stupidity.

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

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

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

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

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.

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

Biography lends to death a new terror.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

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

In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.

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

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.

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.

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

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

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

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

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

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

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

All art is quite useless.

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

Everything popular is wrong.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.

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