Oscar Wilde Quotes

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

“In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.”

“They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about.”

“Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered.”

“A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.”

“I have no objection to anyone’s sex life as long as they don’t practice it in the street and frighten the horses.”

“Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.”

“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, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.”

“My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people's.”

“You are more to me than any of them has any idea; you are the atmosphere of beauty through which I see life; you are the incarnation of all lovely things… I think of you day and night. ~ Letter to Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas”

“nothing that is worth knowing can be taught”

“Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.”

“I never change, except in my affections.”

“Conformity is the last refuge of the unimaginitive”

“There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.”

“Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.”

“Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.”

“People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately.”

“I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.”

“It is the stupid and the ugly who have the best of it in this world”

“There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I must tell you something about yourself. I thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted.”

“Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.”

“To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.”

“It is perfectly monstrous,' he said, at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.”

“She… can talk brillantly upon any subject provided she knows nothing about it.”

“To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.”

“Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation, and conversation must have a common basis, and between two people of widely different culture the only common basis possible is the lowest level.”

“I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.”

“If you want to be a doormat you have to lay yourself down first.”

“A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.”

“I could deny it if I liked. I could deny anything if I liked.”

“I'll bet you anything you like that half an hour after they have met, they will be calling each other sister.
Women only do that when they have called each other a lot of other things first.”

“A kiss may ruin a human life”

“The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.”

“Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.”

“Man is many things, but he is not rational.”

“When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy.”

“A passion for pleasure is the secret of remaining young.”

“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 coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!”

“I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.”

“One should always be a little improbable.”

“I beg your pardon I didn't recognise you - I've changed a lot.”

“My life-my whole life- take it, and do with it what you will. I love you-love you as I have never loved any living thing. From the moment I met you I loved you, loved you blindly, adoringly, madly!

You didn't know it then-you know it now.”

“Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.”

“The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.”

“Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.”

“Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.”

“When good Americans die, they go to Paris.”

“The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.”

“Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton. Nothing succeeds like excess.”