Oscar Wilde Quotes

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

“A mask tells us more than a face.”

“Every impulse we strangle will only poison us.”

“He made me see what Life is, and what Death signifies, and why Love is stronger than both.”

“It is so easy to convince others; it is so difficult to convince oneself.”

“The secret to life is to enjoy the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.”

“A poet can survive everything but a misprint.”

“Most people are boring and stupid.”

“Imagination is a quality that was given to man compensate him from whats not. The sense of humor was given to console him from what is.”

“Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.”

“Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity.”

“If one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.”

“But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.”

“Just because a man has died for it, does not make it true.”

“I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will look just like every one else.”

“Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day.”

“America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.”

“Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable”

“She is a peacock in everything but beauty!”

“If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.”

“To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.”

“I don't want to earn my living, I want to live.”

“When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.”

“Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.”

“A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.”

“I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all. 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.”

“Why can't these American women stay in their own country? They are always telling us that it is the paradise for women.

It is. That is the reason why, like Eve, they are so excessively anxious to get out of it.”

“One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.”

“The moon in her chariot of pearl”

“I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.”

“Give a man a mask and he’ll tell you the truth.”

“Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.”

“The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.”

“Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which is never advisable.”

“But youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.”

“I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.”

“He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one's eyes, and does not look at him.”

“Do you smoke?

Well, yes, I must admit I smoke.

I'm glad to hear of it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind.”

“Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One must eat muffins quite calmly, it is the only way to eat them.”

“The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty and to someone else if she is plain.”

“It is not wise to find symbols in everything that one sees. It makes life too full of terrors.”

“She knew nothing but she had everything he had lost.”

“In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.”

“It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously”

“It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears
is said to be seen in San Francisco.
It must be a delightful city and possess
all the attractions of the next world”

“Do you really think, Arthur, that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to.”

“Plain women are always jealous of their husbands. Beautiful women never are. They are always so occupied with being jealous of other women's husbands.”

“I didn't say I liked it Harry. I said it fascinated me. There is a great difference.”

“Love is easily killed.”

“It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never put one's worship into words.”