Oscar Wilde Quotes

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

“It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.”

“When bankers get together for dinner, they discuss Art. When artists get together for dinner, they discuss Money”

“I've now realized for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.”

“To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.”

“What men call the shadow of the body is not the shadow of the body, but is the body of the soul.”

“The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.”

“It's the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.”

“You told me you had destroyed it."

"I was wrong. It has destroyed me.”

“Lord Illingworth: The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden.
Mrs. Allonby: It ends with Revelations.”

“Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won't expect it back.”

“The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial.”

“As for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.”

“And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.”

“I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous.”

“Genius lasts longer than beauty”

“But she is happiest alone. She is happiest alone.”

“I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.”

“The number of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one’s clean linen in public.”

“Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.”

“Reported as Oscar Wilde's last words on his death bed…
This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has to go.”

“I don’t write this letter to put bitterness into your heart, but to pluck it out of mine. For my own sake I must forgive you.”

“Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.”

“I don't play accurately--any one can play accurately--but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life.”

“The only horrible thing in the world is ennui.”

“Dear little Swallow,’ said the Prince, ‘you tell me of marvelous things, but more marvelous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery.”

“The best way to make children good is to make them happy.”

“I never saw anybody take so long to dress, and with such little result.”

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”

“Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.”

“The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.”

“Create yourself. Be yourself your poem.”

“Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of physical weakness in the old.”

“I never take any notice to what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do.”

“I am always late on principle, my principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.”

“Love is not fashionable anymore; the poets have killed it.”

“Oh, don't cough, Ernest. When one is dictating one should speak fluently and not cough. Besides, I don't know how to spell a cough.”

“Life cheats us with shadows.
We ask it for pleasure.
It gives it to us with bitterness
and disappointment in its train.”

“Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.”

“I love scrapes. They are the only things that are never serious."
"Oh, that's nonsense, Algy. You never talk anything but nonsense."
"Nobody ever does.”

“Pray don't talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else. And that makes me quite nervous.”

“The one charm about the past is that it is the past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen.”

“An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.”

“The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.”

“You and I will always be friends."

"Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that.”

“Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography.”

“Art only begins where Imitation ends.”

“In war, the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich makes slaves of the poor.”

“Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain.”

“True friends stab you in the front”