Oscar Wilde Quotes

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812 Quotes on Love, Forgiveness, Rebellion, and Embracing Your Unique Voice

“My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.”

“I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.”

“In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.”

“When good Americans die, they go to Paris"
"Where do bad Americans go?"
"They stay in America”

“The simplicity of your character makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me.”

“We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful.”

“As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.”

“I'm too old to know everything”

“Experience is a question of instinct about life.”

“A man who takes himself too seriously will find that no one else takes him seriously.”

“Most people live for love and admiration. But it is by love and admiration that we should live.”

“For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.”

“Conscience makes egotists of us all.”

“Bad artists always admire each others work.”

“The final revelation is that Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.”

“I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.”

“The proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding.”

“Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.”

“I hope you hair curls naturally, does it?
Yes, darling, with a little help from others.”

“To get back one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies.”

“So with curious eyes and sick surmise
We watched him day by day,
And wondered if each one of us
Would end the self-same way,
For none can tell to what red Hell
His sightless soul may stray.”

“Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.”

“Literature always anticipates life. It doesn't copy it but moulds it to it's purpose.”

“From the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul brain and power.”

“I cannot choose one hundred best books because I have only written five”

“Even before I met you I was far from indifferent to you.”

“I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses anyone for asking any question - simple curiosity.”

“How long could you love a woman who didn't love you, Cecil?
A woman who didn't love me? Oh, all my life!”

“we always misunderstood ourselves, and rarely understood others”

“Lady Bracknell. Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well.

Algernon. I’m feeling very well, Aunt Augusta.

Lady Bracknell. That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.”

“If we're always guided by other people's thoughts, what's the point in having our own?”

“It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.”

“Good taste is the excuse I've always given for leading such a bad life”

“Men know life too early. Women know life too late. That is the difference between men and women.”

“Time is a waste of money.”

“One world was not enough for two like me and you.”

“The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.”

“Pleasure is the only thing one should live for, nothing ages like happiness.”

“To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.”

“But what world says that [I'm wicked]? It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent terms.”

“Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.”

“You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter - a girl brought up with the utmost care - to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel?”

“Jack: “Gwendolen, wait here for me.”
Gwendolen: “If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.”

“The bright dawn flooded the room, and swept the fantastic shadows into dusky corners, where they lay shuddering.”

“All great ideas are dangerous.”

“I quite agree with Dr. Nordau's assertion that all men of genius are insane, but Dr. Nordau forgets that all sane people are idiots.”

“It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.”

“It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way.”

“When a man is old enough to do wrong he should be old enough to do right also.”