Oscar Wilde Quotes

1,069 Sourced Quotes

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

Oscar Wilde
In the old times men carried out their rights for themselves as they lived, but nowadays every baby seems born with a social manifesto in its mouth much bigger than itself.

Oscar Wilde
The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms.

Oscar Wilde
Lord Illingworth: The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden.
Mrs. Allonby: It ends with Revelations.

Oscar Wilde
Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Oscar Wilde
I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.

Oscar Wilde
No man should have a secret from his wife. She invariably finds it out.

Oscar Wilde
The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion-these are the two things that govern us.

Oscar Wilde
No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.

Oscar Wilde
The worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.

Oscar Wilde
I believe it is customary in good society to take some slight refreshment at five o'clock.

Oscar Wilde
Oh, I don't care about Jack. I don't care for anybody in the whole world but you. I love you, Cecily. You will marry me, won't you? You silly boy! Of course. Why, we have been engaged for the last three months. For the last three months?

Oscar Wilde
Algy, you always adopt a strictly immoral attitude towards life. You are not quite old enough to do that.

Oscar Wilde
Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.

Oscar Wilde
The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it.

Oscar Wilde
I was dominated, soul, brain, and power by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us artists like an exquisite dream.

Oscar Wilde
My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.

Oscar Wilde
I made your sorrow mine also, that you might have help in bearing it.

Oscar Wilde
The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang Tsǔ spent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all things.

Oscar Wilde
LORD ILLINGWORTH What do you think she'd do if I kissed her? MRS ALLONBY Either marry you, or strike you across the face with her glove. What would you do if she struck you across the face with her glove? LORD ILLINGWORTH Fall in love with her, probably.

Oscar Wilde
Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.

Oscar Wilde
Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old fashioned quite suddenly.

Oscar Wilde
Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless...

Oscar Wilde
To be really medieval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul. To be really Greek one should have no clothes.

Oscar Wilde
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

Oscar Wilde
I delight in men over seventy. They always offer one the devotion of a lifetime.

Oscar Wilde
I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.

Oscar Wilde
Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualifications. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

Oscar Wilde
You have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvelous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid

Oscar Wilde
The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.

Oscar Wilde