Oscar Wilde Quotes

“A good friend will always stab you in the front.”

“There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them.”

“What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise [in the future. But only if we set out to make this true and anticipate it so we look for the blessings until we find them].”

“Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.”

“Cultivated leisure is the aim of man.”

“No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.”

“I have never given adoration to any body except myself.”

“The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value.”

“I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.”

“I wanted to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world… And so, indeed, I went out, and so I lived. My only mistake was that I confined myself so exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side of the garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom.”

“The world has been made by fools that wise men may live in it.”

“The story of mankind began in a garden and ended in revelations.”

“Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things.”

“Fool, nothing is impossible in Russia but reform.”

“Even things that are true can be proved.”

“Love will fly if held too lightly Love will die if held too tightly . . .”

“What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.”

“I have never killed anyone, but I have often read about some guy getting his ass taken out with great pleasure”

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

“Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs.”

“All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.”

“There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”

“In designing the scenery and costumes for any of Shakespeare's plays, the first thing the artist has to settle is the best date for the drama. This should be determined by the general spirit of the play more than by any actual historical references which may occur in it.”

“Things are in their essence what we choose to make them. A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it.”

“Illusion is the first of all pleasures.”