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Oscar Wilde

Irish writer and wit (1854-1900)

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The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived. – Oscar WildeRate it:
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 koward does it with a kiss,The brave man with a sword – Oscar WildeRate it:
I love acting. It is so much more real than life. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death. – Oscar WildeRate it:
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. – Oscar WildeRate it:
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. – Oscar WildeRate it:
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Biography lends to death a new terror. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Chastity is the greatest form of perversion. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Genius is born--not paid. – Oscar WildeRate it:
I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible. – Oscar WildeRate it:
It is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be good than to be ugly. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Missionaries are going to reform the world whether it wants to or not. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace. – Oscar WildeRate it:
My wallpaper and i are fighting a duel to death. One or the other has to go. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Oscar Wilde: "I wish I had said that." Whistler: "You will, Oscar; you will. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life. – Oscar WildeRate it:
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing, as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless. – Oscar WildeRate it:
We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language. – Oscar WildeRate it:
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Children begin by loving their parents as they grow older they judge them sometimes they forgive them. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Experience...is simply the name we give our mistakes. – Oscar WildeRate it:
I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly. – Oscar WildeRate it:
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. – Oscar WildeRate it:
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. – Oscar WildeRate it:
I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex. – Oscar WildeRate it:
I have the simplest of tastes. I am always satisfied with the best. – Oscar WildeRate it:
It is only about things that do not interest one that one can give really unbiased opinions, which is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always valueless. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. – Oscar WildeRate it:
A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Eduaction is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well worth remembering from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. – Oscar WildeRate it:
I can resist anything but temptation. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. – Oscar WildeRate it:
A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result. – Oscar WildeRate it:
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The true craftsman has a light in his eye that Money can't buy Hal Stebbins I read this once when I was Writing a children's story; a time when inspiration had struck...At that time I knew just what he meant...It was so true. Shirley Briggs – Oscar WildeRate it:
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected. – Oscar WildeRate it:
About foxhunting: The unspeakable chasing the uneatable. – Oscar WildeRate it:
But what is the difference between literature and journalism ...Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Arguments are to be avoided they are always vulgar and often convincing. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing. – Oscar WildeRate it:
I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world. – Oscar WildeRate it:
A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want? – Oscar WildeRate it:
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Action is the last refuge of those who cannot dream. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Action: the last resource of those who know not how to dream. – Oscar WildeRate it:
All that I desire to point out is the general principle that Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Always forgive your enemies nothing annoys them so much. – Oscar WildeRate it:
America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up. – Oscar WildeRate it:
America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Art is the most intense form of individualism that the world has known. – Oscar WildeRate it:
As long as war is regarded as wicked it will always have its fascinations. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. – Oscar WildeRate it:
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 WildeRate it:
At twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets. – Oscar WildeRate it:
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 WildeRate it:
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same – Oscar WildeRate it:
Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude. – Oscar WildeRate it:
By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Conscience and cowardice are really the same thing. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Consistency is the last resort of the unimaginative. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Democracy is the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Divorces are made in heaven. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Dreamers can find their way by moonlight and their only punishment is that they see the dawn before the rest of the world. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Everyone who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty. – Oscar WildeRate it:
I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones. – Oscar WildeRate it:
I am not young enough to know everything. – Oscar WildeRate it:
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 WildeRate it:
I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement. – Oscar WildeRate it:
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train. – Oscar WildeRate it:
I sometimes think that God, in creating man, overestimated His ability. – Oscar WildeRate it:
I suppose that I shall have to die beyond my means. – Oscar WildeRate it:
I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability. – Oscar WildeRate it:
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 WildeRate it:
Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Illusion is the first of all pleasures. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Imagination is a quality given to man to compensate for what he is not, and a sense of humaor is provided to console him from what he is. – Oscar WildeRate it:
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information. – Oscar WildeRate it:
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious. – Oscar WildeRate it:
It is an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world. – Oscar WildeRate it:
It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way. – Oscar WildeRate it:
It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating. – Oscar WildeRate it:
It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art. – Oscar WildeRate it:
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. – Oscar WildeRate it:
It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution. – Oscar WildeRate it:
It's absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarist. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship; and it is by far the best ending for one. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Life imitates art more than art imitates life. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Life is too important to be taken seriously. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally dislike. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Nothing is so aggravating as calmness. – Oscar WildeRate it:
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 WildeRate it:
One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing. – Oscar WildeRate it:
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation. – Oscar WildeRate it:
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 WildeRate it:
One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing. – Oscar WildeRate it:
One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar. – Oscar WildeRate it:
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry. – Oscar WildeRate it:
One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards. – Oscar WildeRate it:
One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art. – Oscar WildeRate it:
One's real life is often the life that one does not lead. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Only the shallow know themselves. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Philanthropy is the refuge of rich people who wish to annoy their fellow creatures. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Philosophy teaches us to bear with equanimity the misfortunes of others. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Science is the record of dead religions. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking other people to live as one wishes to live. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Some cause happiness wherever they go others whenever they go. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Sometimes it takes courage to give into temptation. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The basis of optimism is sheer terror. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The English country gentleman galloping after a fox - the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The English country gentleman galloping after a fox -- the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture, and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The modern sympathy with invalids is morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The only charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception necessary for both parties. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The only possible form of exercise is to talk, not to walk. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling I have always cultivated. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The problem with the common person is that he is so unbearably common! – Oscar WildeRate it:
The proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius. – Oscar WildeRate it:
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. – Oscar WildeRate it:
There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up. – Oscar WildeRate it:
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing. – Oscar WildeRate it:
There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope. – Oscar WildeRate it:
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution. – Oscar WildeRate it:
There is no sin except stupidity. – Oscar WildeRate it:
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. – Oscar WildeRate it:
They are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years. – Oscar WildeRate it:
To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability. – Oscar WildeRate it:
To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity. – Oscar WildeRate it:
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable. – Oscar WildeRate it:
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. – Oscar WildeRate it:
To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune to lose both looks like carelessness. – Oscar WildeRate it:
To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance. – Oscar WildeRate it:
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. – Oscar WildeRate it:
True friends stab you in the front. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived. – Oscar WildeRate it:
We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow. – Oscar WildeRate it:
What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities. – Oscar WildeRate it:
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. – Oscar WildeRate it:
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. – Oscar WildeRate it:
When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives. – Oscar WildeRate it:
While one should always study the method of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely universal. The first is personality, which no one should copy; the second is perfection, which all should aim at. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Why was I born with such contemporaries – Oscar WildeRate it:
Why was I born with such contemporaries? – Oscar WildeRate it:
Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Work is the curse of the drinking class. – Oscar WildeRate it:
Work is the curse of the drinking classes. – Oscar WildeRate it:
You will always be fond of me....I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit – Oscar WildeRate it:

The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

– Oscar WildeRate it:

Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.

– Oscar WildeRate it:

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 koward does it with a kiss,The brave man with a sword

– Oscar WildeRate it:

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

– Oscar WildeRate it:

The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.

– Oscar WildeRate it:

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

– Oscar WildeRate it: