Oscar Wilde > Quotes

“Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.”
― Oscar Wilde

“No good deed goes unpunished.”
― Oscar Wilde

“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.”
― Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance

“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.”
― Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“Some things are more precious because they don't last long.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“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”
― Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol

“The world is a stage and the play is badly cast.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I like men who have a future and women who have a past.”
― Oscar Wilde

“To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.”
― Oscar Wilde, Miscellaneous Aphorisms; The Soul of Man

“Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.”
― Oscar Wilde, 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.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Every woman is a rebel.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Nowadays 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.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.”
― Oscar Wilde

“To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“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 world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Everything in moderation, including moderation.”
― Oscar Wilde

“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”
― Oscar Wilde

“If you are not long, I will wait for you all my life.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.”
― 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.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan