Oscar Wilde: Trending quotes (page 14)

“Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Life is terrible. It rules us, we do not rule it.”

“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.”

“Young men want to be faithful, and are not. Old men want to be faithless, and cannot.”

“When a golden girl can win
Prayer from out the lips of sin,
When the barren almond bears,
And a little child gives away its tears,
Then shall all the house be still
And peace come to Canterville.”

“Even things that are true can be proved.”

“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”

“I don't know how to talk.
Oh! talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your first season you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact.”

“Oh, I don’t care about Jack. I don’t care for anybody in the whole world but you. I love you, Cecily. You will marry me, won’t you?
You silly boy! Of course. Why, we have been engaged for the last three months.
For the last three months?”

“Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don't think it right.”

“Those who have much are often greedy; those who have little often share.”

“Cecily. This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade.
Gwendolen. [Satirically. ] I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.”

“Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.”

“It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.”

“I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die.”

“What a silly thing love is! It is not half as useful as logic, for it does not prove anything and it is always telling one things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true.”