Oscar Wilde Quotes

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The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity. Now Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic. There is a very wide difference.

Oscar Wilde
Lo! with a little rod
I did but touch the honey of romance —
And must I lose a soul's inheritance?

Oscar Wilde
You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.

Oscar Wilde
Thin-lipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair, hinted at prudence, quoted from that book of cowardice whose author apes the name of common sense.

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

Oscar Wilde
Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night.

Oscar Wilde
As one reads history... one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted.

Oscar Wilde
I have known men come to London full of bright prospects and seen them complete wrecks in a few months through a habit of answering letters.

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
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
I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.

Oscar Wilde
One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed.

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

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

Oscar Wilde
Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.

Oscar Wilde
Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.

Oscar Wilde
Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?

Oscar Wilde
She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm.

Oscar Wilde
To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.

Oscar Wilde
Well, one must be serious about something, if one wants to have any amusement in life.

Oscar Wilde
The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man's intelligence.

Oscar Wilde
I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean.

Oscar Wilde
Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne.

Oscar Wilde
In America, the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.

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

Oscar Wilde