Oscar Wilde Quotes

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And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

Oscar Wilde
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

Oscar Wilde
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

Oscar Wilde
I can resist everything except temptation.

Oscar Wilde
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Oscar Wilde
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

Oscar Wilde
Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

Oscar Wilde
I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

Oscar Wilde
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

Oscar Wilde
I am afraid that woman appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more than anything else. They have wonderfully primitive instincts. We have emancipated them, but they remain slaves looking for their masters, all the same. They love being dominated.

Oscar Wilde
The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ

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

Oscar Wilde
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it has merely been detected.

Oscar Wilde
And her sweet red lips on these lips of mine Burned like the ruby fire set In the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine, Or the bleeding wounds of the pomegranate, Or the heart of the lotus drenched and wet With the spilt-out blood of the rose-red wine.

Oscar Wilde
We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.

Oscar Wilde
Lady Hunstanton: But do you believe all that is written in the newspapers?
Lord Illingworth: I do. Nowadays it is only the unreadable that occurs.

Oscar Wilde
Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams.

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

Oscar Wilde
To have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered.

Oscar Wilde
Each little thing that we do passes into the great machine of life which may grind our virtues to powder and make them worthless, or transform our sins into elements of a new civilization, more marvelous and more splendid than any that has gone before.

Oscar Wilde
Learned conversation is either the affectation of the ignorant or the profession of the mentally unemployed.

Oscar Wilde
There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannises over the body. There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.

Oscar Wilde
My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people's.

Oscar Wilde
He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals.

Oscar Wilde
What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb. American novels, answered Lord Henry.

Oscar Wilde