Oscar Wilde: Thing

Oscar Wilde was Irish writer and poet. Explore interesting quotes on thing.

Oscar Wilde: 1624 quotes1011 likes

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
Context: With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

“Men always want to be a woman’s first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about these things. What (women) like is to be a man’s last romance.”

Oscar Wilde

“There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.”

Oscar Wilde

Variant: There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”

Oscar Wilde

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

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Variant: If there is anything more annoying in the world than having people talk about you, it is certainly having no one talk about you.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Variant: Often quoted as: Life is far too important to be taken seriously.
Variant: Often quoted as: Life is too important to be taken seriously.
Variant: Often quoted as: Life is too important to take seriously.
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892), Lord Darlington, Act I

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Variant: There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.”

Oscar Wilde

Source: The Critic as Artist (1891), Part II

“The most terrible thing about it is not that it breaks one’s heart—hearts are made to be broken—but that it turns one’s heart to stone.”

Oscar Wilde book De Profundis

Source: De Profundis

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
Context: Don't imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your perfection is inside of you. If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken from you. And so, try to so shape your life that external things will not harm you. And try also to get rid of personal property. It involves sordid preoccupation, endless industry, continual wrong. Personal property hinders Individualism at every step.

“If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want.”

Oscar Wilde

“Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.”

Oscar Wilde book The Happy Prince and Other Tales

Source: The Happy Prince and Other Tales

“Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Lord Goring, Act II
Source: An Ideal Husband (1895)

“Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.”

Oscar Wilde book The Nightingale and the Rose

Source: The Nightingale and the Rose

“The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.”