Oscar Wilde - People Quotes

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

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

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

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
You can't possibly ask me to go without having some dinner. It's absurd. I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that.

Oscar Wilde
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

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

Oscar Wilde
A person who, because he has corns himself, always treads on other people's toes.

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

Oscar Wilde
Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good.

Oscar Wilde
Flowers are as common in the country as people are in London.

Oscar Wilde
I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering.

Oscar Wilde
The moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist.

Oscar Wilde
One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.

Oscar Wilde
Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation, and conversation must have a common basis, and between two people of widely different culture the only common basis possible is the lowest level.

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
I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.

Oscar Wilde
People thought it dreadful of me to have entertained at dinner the evil things of life, and to have found pleasure in their company. But then, from the point of view through which I, as an artist in life, approach them they were delightfully suggestive and stimulating. It was like feasting with panthers; the danger was half the excitement.

Oscar Wilde
People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is ridiculous.

Oscar Wilde
It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.

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
Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.

Oscar Wilde
What a fuss people make about fidelity!" exclaimed Lord Henry. "Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say.

Oscar Wilde
The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.

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
Indeed I have always been of the opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing to do.

Oscar Wilde
Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.

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

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

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