Oscar Wilde Quotes

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The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes.

Oscar Wilde
It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.

Oscar Wilde
I don't regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience.

Oscar Wilde
Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.

Oscar Wilde
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

Oscar Wilde
Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given away. The ruby shall be redder than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as the great sea.

Oscar Wilde
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.

Oscar Wilde
On expensive surgery:
Ah, well, then, I suppose that I shall have to die beyond my means.

Oscar Wilde
It is to do nothing that the elect exist. Action is limited and relative. Unlimited and absolute is the vision of him who sits at ease and watches, who walks in loneliness and dreams.

Oscar Wilde
Ah! The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, women...merely adored.

Oscar Wilde
Men know life too early. Women know life too late. That is the difference between men and women.

Oscar Wilde
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Oscar Wilde
The play was a great success, but the audience was a total failure.

Oscar Wilde
The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid

Oscar Wilde
What you really are is a Bunburyist. I was quite right in saying you were a Bunburyist. You are one of the most advanced Bunburyists I know.

Oscar Wilde
We women, as some one says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes...

Oscar Wilde
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

Oscar Wilde
Action [...] is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.

Oscar Wilde
And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.

Oscar Wilde
I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

Oscar Wilde
No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

Oscar Wilde
Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.

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