Oscar Wilde Quotes

I am not at all cynical, I have merely got experience, which, however, is very much the same thing.

Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered.

The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices.

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.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. We all have clouds above us but some see their silver linings. We all face difficulties but some of us are grateful that they aren't worse.

A method of procuring sensations? Do you think then, that a man who has once committed a murder could possibly do the same crime again? Don't tell me that." says Dorian. "Oh! anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often," says Lord Henry

Friendship never forgets. That is the wonderful thing about it.

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it. To the great poet, there is only one method of music - his own. To the great painter, there is only one manner of painting - that which he himself employs. The aesthetic critic, and the aesthetic critic alone, can appreciate all forms and all modes. It is to him that Art makes her appeal.

The aim of love is to love. No more, no less.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

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.

After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one’s tears.

I have said to you to speak the truth is a painful thing. To be forced to tell lies is much worse.

The best people to work for are me, myself and I.

A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.

Niagara Falls is simply a vast unnecessary amount of water going over the wrong way and then falling over unnecessary cliffs...The wonder would be if the water did not fall.

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

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

Sooner or later we have all to pay for what we do.

Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons.

I must say... that I ruined myself: and that nobody, great or small, can be ruined except by his own hand.

Only love can keep anyone alive.

A man who pays his bills on time is soon forgotten.

If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.

After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed and mourning over tragedies that were not my own.

All art is immortal. For emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of art, and emotion for the sake of action is the aim of life.

I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.

I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.

The job of the critic is to report to us his moods.

Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty. Then, and then only, does it comes into existence.

Make some sacrifice for your art and you will be repaid, but ask of art to sacrifice herself for you and a bitter disappointment may come to you.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

One can live for years sometimes without living at all, and then all life comes crowding into one single hour.

Schopenhauer has analysed the pessimism that characterize modern thought, but Hamlet invented it

A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say at the age of eighteen.

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

A book or poem which has no pity in it had better not be written.

Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance.

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

The only way to atone for being occasionally overdressed is to be massively overeducated.

I have pleasures, and passions, but the joy of life is gone. I am going under: the morgue yawns for me. I go and look at my zinc-bed there. After all, I had a wonderful life, which is, I fear, over.

The worst slave owners were those who were kind to their slaves

He who stands most remote from his age is he who mirrors it best.

Industry is the root of all ugliness.

If this is the way Queen Victoria treats her prisoners, she doesn't deserve to have any.

Tea is the only simple pleasure left to us.

I'm not nearly young enough to know everything

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

A man who takes himself too seriously will find that no one else takes him seriously.

Don't be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for you. This is merely the beginning.

While one should always study the method of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely universal. The first personality, which no one should copy.

A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it.

Wordsworth went to the Lakes, but he was never a lake poet. He found in stones the sermons he had already hidden there.

Bad manners make a journalist.

If a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. But if a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly.

Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failures.

Life would be dull without them.

Only good questions deserve good answers.

His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion.