Oscar Wilde Quotes

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

“You can't possibly ask me to go without having some dinner. It's absurd. I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that.”

“My desire to live is as intense as ever, and though my heart is broken, hearts are made to be broken: that is why God sends sorrow into the world.”

“LORD ILLINGWORTH: The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life.
MRS ALLONBY: And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy.”

“High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.”

“The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married.”

“How clever are you, my dear! You never mean a single word you say!”

“A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.”

“I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure.
I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience.”

“My dear Algy, you talk exactly as if you were a dentist. It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produces false impression”

“It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.”

“You can have your secret as long as I have your heart[. ]”

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

“It is a great mistake for men to give up paying compliments, for when they give up saying what is charming, they give up thinking what is charming.”

“The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.”

“this woman is a genius in the day time and a beauty at night”

“A burnt child loves the fire.”

“If people are dishonest once, they will be dishonest a second time. And honest people should keep away from them. (Lady Chiltern)”

“I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.”

“When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.”

“I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope.”

“She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.”

“I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out.”

“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.”

“The curves of your lips rewrite history.”

“And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”

“Circumstances should never alter principles!”

“I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.”

“What art seeks to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.”

“I am a born antinomian. I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes.”

“Good heavens! how marriage ruins a man! It's as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.”

“Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.”

“It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.”

“Spontaneity is a meticulously prepared art”

“The world seemed to me fine because you were in it, and goodness more real because you lived.”

“Muffins should always be eaten quite calmly, as it is the only way to eat them!”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“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?”

“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.”

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

“Even things that are true can be proved.”

“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.”

“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.”