Oscar Wilde Quotes

1,069 Sourced Quotes

On George Bernard Shaw An excellent man: he has no enemies, and none of his friends like him.

Oscar Wilde
It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it.

Oscar Wilde
Cecily: When I see a spade I call it a spade.
Gwendolen: I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade.

Oscar Wilde
The only beautiful things are the things that do not concern us.

Oscar Wilde
In going to America one learns that poverty is not a necessary accompaniment to civilisation. There at any rate is a country that has no trappings, no pageants and no gorgeous ceremonies.

Oscar Wilde
Jack: That, my dear Algy, is the whole truth pure and simple.
Algernon: The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!

Oscar Wilde
All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.

Oscar Wilde
Marriage is hardly a thing one can do now and then, except in America.

Oscar Wilde
There are few things easier than to live badly and to die well.

Oscar Wilde
The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not its growth and development.

Oscar Wilde
After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one's tears.

Oscar Wilde
People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.

Oscar Wilde
Come down, O Christ, and help me! reach thy hand,
For I am drowning in a stormier sea
Than Simon on thy lake of Galilee

Oscar Wilde
Tell me, when you are alone with him [Max Beerbohm] Sphinx, does he take off his face and reveal his mask?

Oscar Wilde
What is truth? In matters of religion, it is simply the opinion that has survived. In matters of science, it is the ultimate sensation. In matters of art, it is one's last mood.

Oscar Wilde
A temperament capable of receiving, through an imaginative medium, and under imaginative conditions, new and beautiful impressions, is the only temperament that can appreciate a work of art.

Oscar Wilde
As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.

Oscar Wilde
If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

Oscar Wilde
When a man has no enemy left there must be something mean about him.

Oscar Wilde