Oscar Wilde - People Quotes

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When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.

Oscar Wilde
I never came across anyone in whom the moral sense was dominant who was not heartless, cruel, vindictive, log-stupid, and entirely lacking in the smallest sense of humanity. Moral people, as they are termed, are simple beasts.

Oscar Wilde
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

Oscar Wilde
I was disappointed with Niagara—most people must be disappointed with Niagara. Every American bride is taken there, and the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest disappointments in American married life.

Oscar Wilde
When one pays a visit it is for the purpose of wasting other people's time, not one's own.

Oscar Wilde
Only people who look dull ever get into the House of Commons, and only people who are dull ever succeed there.

Oscar Wilde
As a wicked man I am a complete failure. Why, there are lots of people who say I have never really done anything wrong in the whole course of my life. Of course they only say it behind my back.

Oscar Wilde
I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do. If a personality fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that personality selects is absolutely delightful to me.

Oscar Wilde
I like looking at geniuses and listening to beautiful people.

Oscar Wilde
Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent people we call the dead?

Oscar Wilde
Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob.

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
All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.

Oscar Wilde
My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people's.

Oscar Wilde
Ordinary people waited till life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect.

Oscar Wilde
Do not be afraid of the past. If people tell you that it is irrevocable, do not believe them. The past, the present and the future are but one moment in the sight of God, in whose sight we should try to live. Time and space, succession and extension, are merely accidental conditions of thought. The imagination can transcend them.

Oscar Wilde
San Francisco is a really beautiful city. China Town, peopled by Chinese labourers, is the most artistic town I have ever come across. The people — strange, melancholy Orientals, whom many people would call common, and they are certainly very poor — have determined that they will have nothing about them that is not beautiful.

Oscar Wilde
The first thing that struck me on landing in America was that if the Americans are not the most well- dressed people in the world, they are the most comfortably dressed.

Oscar Wilde
In fact, the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.... The Japanese people are... simply a mode of style, an exquisite fancy of art.

Oscar Wilde
Good intentions have been the ruin of the world. The only people who have achieved anything have been those who have had no intentions at all.

Oscar Wilde
Youth! There is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in Life's lumber-room. But youth is the Lord of Life. Youth has a kingdom waiting for it. Every one is born a king, and most people die in exile.

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
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.

Oscar Wilde
Most people live for love and admiration. But it is by love and admiration that we should live.

Oscar Wilde
Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.

Oscar Wilde
The supreme object of life is to live. Few people live. It is true life only to realize one's own perfection, to make one's every dream a reality.

Oscar Wilde
I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don't interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.

Oscar Wilde
Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can't get into it do that.

Oscar Wilde
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Oscar Wilde
Ah! Don't say you agree with me. When people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

Oscar Wilde