Oscar Wilde Quotes

1,069 Sourced Quotes

He was a hero to his valet, who bullied him, and a terror to most of his relations, whom he bullied in turn. Only England could have produced him, and he always said that the country was going to the dogs. His principles were out of date, but there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices.

Oscar Wilde
He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing.

Oscar Wilde
Oh, don't cough, Ernest. When one is dictating one should speak fluently and not cough. Besides, I don't know how to spell a cough.

Oscar Wilde
Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity.

Oscar Wilde
Ah! That must be Aunt Augusta. Only relatives, or creditors, ever ring in that Wagnerian manner.

Oscar Wilde
I have always wished to believe that the line of strength and the line of beauty are one. That wish was realised when I contemplated American machinery.

Oscar Wilde
As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.

Oscar Wilde
Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.

Oscar Wilde
You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one.

Oscar Wilde
In England people actually try to be brilliant at breakfast. That is so dreadful of them! Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

Oscar Wilde
Pleasure is the only thing one should live for, nothing ages like happiness.

Oscar Wilde
Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such a paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering. They have to be told of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve them.

Oscar Wilde
If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened. It is simply expression that gives reality to things.

Oscar Wilde
And let me touch those curving claws of yellow ivory; and grasp the tail that like a monstrous asp coils round your heavy velvet paws.

Oscar Wilde
Society, civilized society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef.

Oscar Wilde
It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little.

Oscar Wilde
Private information is practically the source of every large modern fortune.

Oscar Wilde
There is one thing infinitely more pathetic than to have lost the woman one is in love with, and that is to have won her and found out how shallow she is!

Oscar Wilde
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.

Oscar Wilde
Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day.

Oscar Wilde
A woman's life revolves in curves of emotions. It is upon lines of intellect that a man's life progresses.

Oscar Wilde
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

Oscar Wilde
I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.

Oscar Wilde
There is more to be said for stupidity than people imagine. Personally I have a great admiration for stupidity. It is a sort of fellow-feeling, I suppose.

Oscar Wilde
Lord Goring: Now I'm gonna give you some good advice.
Mrs. Cheveley: Pray don't. You should never give a woman something she can't wear in the evening, Act III.

Oscar Wilde
If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.

Oscar Wilde
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

Oscar Wilde
There is always more brass than brains in an aristocracy.

Oscar Wilde
We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.

Oscar Wilde
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

Oscar Wilde