Oscar Wilde Quotes page 15 812 Quotes on Love, Forgiveness, Rebellion, and Embracing Your Unique Voice

“I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood.”

A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated (1894)

“It is always the unreadable that occurs.”

The Critic as Artist (1891), Part I

Oscar Wilde book The Decay of Lying

The Decay of Lying (1889)

“The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.”

“Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb a the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf.”

Lord Illingworth, Act I
A Woman of No Importance (1893)

“A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it.”

Mabel Chiltern, Act II
An Ideal Husband (1895)

Oscar Wilde book De Profundis

De Profundis (1897)

“The vilest deeds like poison weeds
Bloom well in prison-air:
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there”

Oscar Wilde book The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Pt. V, st. 30
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
Context: The vilest deeds like poison weeds
Bloom well in prison-air:
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there:
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair.

“Kelvil: May I ask, Lord Illingworth, if you regard the House of Lords as a better institution than the House of Commons?
Lord Illingworth: A much better institution of course. We in the House of Lords are never in touch with public opinion. That makes us a civilised body.”

“Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.”

Act I
A Woman of No Importance (1893)

“Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good.”

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

“The fact is, that civilisation 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.”

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

“The only link between Literature and the Drama left to us in England at the present moment is the bill of the play.”

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.”

A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated (1894)

“For what man has sought for is, indeed, neither pain nor pleasure, but simply Life. Man has sought to live intensely, fully, perfectly. When he can do so without exercising restraint on others, or suffering it ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to him, he will be saner, healthier, more civilised, more himself. Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.”

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

“A pessimist is one who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both”

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

“They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist.”

Similar quotes are found, unattributed, from as early as 1899 https://books.google.com/books?id=lC81AAAAIAAJ&pg=RA4-PA32&dq=%22two+evils%22+both+pessimist&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMIuveP5uz0yAIVBVqICh0GRQQJ#v=onepage&q=%22two%20evils%22%20both%20pessimist&f=false. First clear attribution to Wilde was not until 1977 https://books.google.com/books?id=eOcWAQAAMAAJ&q=oscar+wilde+%22two+evils%22&dq=oscar+wilde+%22two+evils%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CE4Q6AEwCWoVChMIjMLEuO30yAIVBpSICh0c4Qi9 <br class="br">Disputed

“The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance. The only thing that can console one for being rich is economy.”

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

“Meredith is a prose Browning, and so is Browning. He used poetry as a medium for writing in prose.”

A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated (1894)

“The one thing that the public dislike is novelty. Any attempt to extend the subject matter of art is extremely distasteful to the public; and yet the vitality and progress of art depend in a large measure on the continual extension of subject-matter. The public dislike novelty because they are afraid of it. It represents to them a mode of Individualism, an assertion on the part of the artist that he selects his own subject, and treats it as he chooses.”

The Critic as Artist (1891), Part I

“Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life. Mothers are different. Mothers are darlings.”

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

“The absence of old friends one can endure with equanimity. But even a momentary separation from anyone to whom one has just been introduced is almost unbearable.”

Lord Goring, Act IV
An Ideal Husband (1895)

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Cecily, Act II
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

“However, it is always nice to be expected, and not to arrive.”

“Only good questions deserve good answers.”

Lord Goring, Act III
An Ideal Husband (1895)

Oscar Wilde book De Profundis

De Profundis (1897)

“There are as many perfections as there are imperfect men. And while to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free, to the claims of conformity no man may yield and remain free at all.”

“When one pays a visit it is for the purpose of wasting other people's time, not one's own.”

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

“We are specially designed to appeal to the sense of humour.”

Lord Goring, Act IV
An Ideal Husband (1895)

Oscar Wilde book De Profundis

De Profundis (1897)

“As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.”

“Lord Illingworth: Women have become too brilliant. Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humour in the woman.
Mrs. Allonby: Or the want of it in the man.”

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

“This too I know—and wise it were
If each could know the same—
That every prison that men build
Is built with bricks of shame,
And bound with bars lest Christ should see
How men their brothers maim.”

Act I http://books.google.com/books?id=RHkWAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Women+have+become+too+brilliant+Nothing+spoils+a+romance+so+much+as+a+sense+of+humour+in+the+woman%22+%22or+the+want+of+it+in+the+man%22&pg=PA34#v=onepage <br class="br">A Woman of No Importance (1893)

Oscar Wilde book The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Pt. V, st. 29
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

“There are few things easier than to live badly and to die well.”

“Lord Caversham: No woman, plain or pretty, has any common sense at all, sir. Common sense is the privilege of our sex.
Lord Goring: Quite so. And we men are so self-sacrificing that we never use it, do we, father?”

Vera; or, The Nihilists (1880)

“Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood.”

Act III
An Ideal Husband (1895)

“I cannot understand your nature. If my nature had been made to suit your comprehension rather than my own requirements, I am afraid I would have made a very poor figure in the world.”

Letter http://www.artsandartists.org/exhpages/whistler.html to James McNeill Whistler (23 February 1885)

“In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever and ever.”

Vera; or, The Nihilists (1880)

“I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky.”

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

Oscar Wilde book The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Pt. I, st. 3
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

“His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning.”

Oscar Wilde book The Decay of Lying

A reference to George Meredith's style.
The Decay of Lying (1889)

“There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other—by language, which is the parent, and not the child, of thought.”

“Science can never grapple with the irrational. That is why it has no future before it, in this world.”

The Critic as Artist (1891), Part I

“All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.”

Mrs Cheveley, Act I
An Ideal Husband (1895)

“Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.”

"The Portrait of Mr. W. H.," Blackwood's Magazine, July 1889 http://books.google.com/books?id=QfczAQAAMAAJ&q=%22All+charming+people+I+fancy+are+spoiled+It+is+the+secret+of+their+attraction%22&pg=PA4#v=onepage

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Algernon, Act I
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

“Reforms in Russia are very tragic, but they always end in a farce.”

“Why was I born with such contemporaries?”

Baron Raff, Act IV
Vera; or, The Nihilists (1880)

“The English country gentleman galloping after a fox — the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.”

George Bernard Shaw Preface to The Dark Lady of the Sonnets (1910)
Misattributed

“Be happy, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart's-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty.”

Lord Illingworth, Act I
A Woman of No Importance (1893)

Oscar Wilde book The Happy Prince and Other Tales

"The Nightingale and the Rose"
The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)

“In America, the President reigns for four years, and journalism governs for ever and ever. Fortunately, in America journalism has carried its authority to the grossest and most brutal extreme. As a natural consequence it has begun to create a spirit of revolt, people are amused by it, or disgusted by it, according to their temperaments. but it is no longer the real force it was. It is not seriously treated. In England, journalism, except in a few well-known instances, not having been carried to such excesses of brutality, is still a great factor, a remarkable power. The tyranny that it proposes to exercise over people's private lives seems to me to be quite extraordinary.”

“To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist – the problem is so entirely the same in both cases. To know exactly how much oil one must put with one's vinegar.”

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891) <br class="br">Source: Wilde, Oscar, (1891 / 1912) The Soul of Man Under Socialism, London, Arthur L. Humphreys. Retrieved from University of California Libraries Archive.org https://archive.org 13 February 2018 https://archive.org/details/soulofmanunderso00wildiala

“I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose.”

Vera; or, The Nihilists (1880)

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Algernon, Act I
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

“And it is only fair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always apologise to one in private for what they have written against one in public.”

“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.”

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

“I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lip.”

"A New Calendar," The Pall Mall Gazette http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/1307/ (February 17, 1887)