Oscar Wilde Quotes

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Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

Oscar Wilde
I am not laughing, Dorian; at least I am not laughing at you. But you should not say the greatest romance of your life. You should say the first romance of your life. You will always be loved, and you will always be in love with love. A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the idle classes of a country. Don't be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for you. This is merely the beginning.

Oscar Wilde
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

Oscar Wilde
It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.

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

Oscar Wilde
He wanted to be where no one would know who he was. He wanted to escape from himself.

Oscar Wilde
There is a tiny yellow daffodil, The butterfly can see it from afar, Although one summer evening's dew could fill Its little cup twice over, ere the star Had called the lazy shepherd to his fold, And be no prodigal.

Oscar Wilde
The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.

Oscar Wilde
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

Oscar Wilde
When we have fully discovered the scientific laws that govern life, we shall realize that the one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action. He, indeed, knows neither the origin of his deeds nor their results.

Oscar Wilde
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

Oscar Wilde
How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?

Oscar Wilde
The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.

Oscar Wilde
He to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives.

Oscar Wilde
Philosophy teaches us to bear with equanimity the misfortunes of others.

Oscar Wilde
For life is terribly deficient in form. Its catastrophes happen in the wrong way and to the wrong people. There is a grotesque horror about its comedies, and its tragedies seem to culminate in farce.

Oscar Wilde
Sooner or later we have all to pay for what we do.

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

Oscar Wilde
Love is fed by the imagination, by which we become wiser than we know, better than we feel, nobler than we are: by which we can see life as a whole, by which and by which alone we can understand others in their real and their ideal relation. Only what is fine, and finely conceived can feed love. But anything will feed hate.

Oscar Wilde
Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

Oscar Wilde
I like talking to a brick wall- it's the only thing in the world that never contradicts me!

Oscar Wilde
As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.

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

Oscar Wilde
And when wind and winter harden All the loveless land, It will whisper of the garden, You will understand.

Oscar Wilde
Do you really think, Arthur, that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to.

Oscar Wilde