Oscar Wilde - Man Quotes

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I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.

Oscar Wilde
A man whose desire is to be something separate from himself, to be a member of Parliament, or a successful grocer, or a prominent solicitor, or a judge, or something equally tedious, invariably succeeds in being what he wants to be. That is his punishment. Those who want a mask have to wear it.

Oscar Wilde
Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

Oscar Wilde
God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too.

Oscar Wilde
For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is.

Oscar Wilde
Don't imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you. If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken from you. And so, try to so shape your life that external things will not harm you. And try also to get rid of personal property. It involves sordid preoccupation, endless industry, continual wrong. Personal property hinders Individualism at every step.

Oscar Wilde
Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me?

Oscar Wilde
The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.

Oscar Wilde
It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man's deeper nature is soon found out.

Oscar Wilde
The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man. And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not?

Oscar Wilde
There was purification in punishment. Not 'Forgive us our sins,' but 'Smite us for our iniquities' should be the prayer of a man to a most just God.

Oscar Wilde
Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.

Oscar Wilde
The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action.

Oscar Wilde
A man is called affected, nowadays, if he dresses as he likes to dress. But in doing that he is acting in a perfectly natural manner. Affectation, in such matters, consists in dressing according to the views of one's neighbour, whose views, as they are the views of the majority, will probably be extremely stupid.

Oscar Wilde
For what man has sought for is, indeed, neither pain nor pleasure, but simply Life. Man has sought to live intensely, fully, perfectly. When he can do so without exercising restraint on others, or suffering it ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to him, he will be saner, healthier, more civilised, more himself. Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.

Oscar Wilde
Do you smoke? Well, yes, I must admit I smoke. I'm glad to hear of it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind.

Oscar Wilde
If you meet at dinner a man who has spent his life in educating himself - a rare type in our time... you rise from table richer, and conscious that a high ideal has for a moment touched and sanctified your days. But Oh! my dear Ernest, to sit next to a man who has spent his life in trying to educate others! What a dreadful experience that is!

Oscar Wilde
Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. What this century worships is wealth. The God of this century is wealth. To succeed one must have wealth. At all costs one must have wealth.

Oscar Wilde
When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.

Oscar Wilde
What do you call a bad man? The sort of man who admires innocence.

Oscar Wilde
Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?
Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Oscar Wilde
Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.

Oscar Wilde
When a man is old enough to do wrong he should be old enough to do right also.

Oscar Wilde
How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

Oscar Wilde
Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is.

Oscar Wilde
On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American man is ever idle, and partly to the fact that no American wife is considered responsible for the quality of her husband's dinners.

Oscar Wilde
If a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise authority over it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot receive any artistic impression from it at all. The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art. The spectator is to be receptive. He is to be the violin on which the master is to play. And the more completely he can suppress his own silly views, his own foolish prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what Art should be, or should not be, the more likely he is to understand and appreciate the work of art in question.

Oscar Wilde
The burden of this world is too great for one man to bear, and the world's sorrow too heavy for one heart to suffer.

Oscar Wilde
How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.

Oscar Wilde
The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever.

Oscar Wilde