Oscar Wilde Quotes

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Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

Oscar Wilde
Mothers, of course, are all right. They pay a chap's bills and don't bother him. But fathers bother a chap and never pay his bills.

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
The history of women is the history of the worst form of tyranny the world has ever known. The tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.

Oscar Wilde
Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved.

Oscar Wilde
To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

Oscar Wilde
To get back one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies.

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
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

Oscar Wilde
To toil for a hard master is bitter, but to have no master to toil for is more bitter still.

Oscar Wilde
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity's machine.

Oscar Wilde
Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

Oscar Wilde
It is absurd to say that there are neither ruins nor curiosities in America when they have their mothers and their manners.

Oscar Wilde
"She said that she would dance with me if I brought her red roses," cried the young Student; "but in all my garden there is no red rose."

Oscar Wilde
I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.

Oscar Wilde
I have been right, Basil, haven't I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare's plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.

Oscar Wilde
For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it.

Oscar Wilde
I know that handwriting…I remember it perfectly. The ten commandments in every stroke of the pen, and the moral law all over the page.

Oscar Wilde
Lord Caversham: No woman, plain or pretty, has any common sense at all, sir. Common sense is the privilege of our sex.
Lord Goring: Quite so. And we men are so self-sacrificing that we never use it, do we, father?

Oscar Wilde
Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.

Oscar Wilde
It is quite true that I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man usually gives to a friend. Somehow, I had never loved a woman. I suppose I never had time. Perhaps, as Harry says, a really grande passion is the privilege of those who have nothing to do, and that is the use of the idle classes in a country

Oscar Wilde