A bad man is the sort of man who admires innocence, and a bad woman is the sort of woman a man never gets tired of.
— Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance (1893)

A burnt child loves the fire.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

A cynic is a person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
— Oscar Wilde

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
— Oscar Wilde

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.
— Oscar Wilde

A kiss may ruin a human life.
— Oscar Wilde, Mrs. Arbuthnot in A Woman of No Importance, act 4 (1893)

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
— Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891)

A little space he let his greedy eyes
Rest on the burnished image, till mere sight
Half swooned for surfeit of such luxuries,
And then his lips in hungering delight
Fed on her lips, and round the towered neck
He flung his arms, nor cared at all his passion's will to check.
— Oscar Wilde, "Charmides," Charmides and other Poems

A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

A man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

A man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.
— Oscar Wilde

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
— Oscar Wilde

A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is invariably plain.
— Oscar Wilde, Cecil Graham, in Lady Windermere's Fan, act 3 (1892)

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
— Oscar Wilde

A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life.
— Oscar Wilde, "De Profundis ", a letter written from prison to Lord Alfred Douglas (1895)

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.
— Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism

A pessimist is one who, when he has a choice of two evils, chooses both.
— Oscar Wilde

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
— Oscar Wilde, quoted in The Fireworks of Oscar Wilde (ed. Owen Dudley Edwards, 1989). "The Children of the Poets," Pall Mall Gazette (London, October 14, 1886)

A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between Art and Nature.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.
— Oscar Wilde

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
— Oscar Wilde

A true friend stabs you in the front.
— Oscar Wilde

A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

A visionary is one who can find his way by moonlight, and see the dawn before the rest of the world.
— Oscar Wilde

A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life.
— Oscar Wilde

A woman will flirt with anyone in the world, so long as other women are looking on.
— Oscar Wilde

After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relatives.
— Oscar Wilde

Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community, and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilization.
— Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism

Ah! Don't say you agree with me. When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.
— Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891)

All art is quite useless.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

All influence is bad, but good influence is the worst in the world.
— Oscar Wilde

All repetition is anti-spiritual.
— Oscar Wilde

All that I desire to point out is the general principle that Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.
— Oscar Wilde, Intentions

All that one should know about modern life is where the Duchesses are; anything else is quite demoralising.
— Oscar Wilde

All the good things in life are immoral, illegal, or heavily taxed.
— Oscar Wilde

All thought is immoral. Its very essence is destruction. If you think of anything, you kill it. Nothing survives being thought of.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

Lord Illingworth: All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy.
Mrs. Allonby: No man does. That is his.
— Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance, act 2. (1893) Also spoken by Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest, act 1. (1895)

All women have to fight with death to keep their children. Death, being childless, wants our children from us.
— Oscar Wilde, Mrs. Arbuthnot in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

Already the slim crocus stirs the snow,
And soon yon blanched fields will bloom again
With nodding cowslips for some lad to mow,
For with the first warm kisses of the rain
The winter's icy sorrow breaks to tears,
And the brown thrushes mate, and with bright eyes the rabbit peers

From the dark warren where the fir-cones lie,
And treads one snowdrop under foot, and runs
Over the mossy knoll, and blackbirds fly
Across our path at evening, and the suns
Stay longer with us; ah! how good to see
Grass-girdled spring in all her joy of laughing greenery

Dance through the hedges till the early rose,
(That sweet repentance of the thorny briar!)
Burst from its sheathed emerald and disclose
The little quivering disk of golden fire
Which the bees know so well, for with it come
Pale boy's-love, sops-in-wine, and daffadillies all in bloom.
— Oscar Wilde, "Humanitad," Charmides and other Poems

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them as much.
— Oscar Wilde

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
— Oscar Wilde

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
— Oscar Wilde

American girls are as clever at concealing their parents as English women are at concealing their past.
— Oscar Wilde

An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship.
— Oscar Wilde

An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be.
— Oscar Wilde

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
— Oscar Wilde

An omnibus across the bridge
Crawls like a yellow butterfly,
And, here and there, a passer-by
Shows like a little restless midge.

Big barges full of yellow hay
Are moored against the shadowy wharf,
And, like a yellow silken scarf,
The thick fog hangs along the quay.

The yellow leaves begin to fade
And flutter from the Temple elms,
And at my feet the pale green Thames
Lies like a rod of rippled jade.
— Oscar Wilde, "Symphony in Yellow"

And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long broken urn
For his mourners will be outcast men
And outcasts always mourn.
— Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

And now, I am dying beyond my means.
— Oscar Wilde, while sipping champagne on his deathbed.

Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

Anybody can be good in the country; there are no temptations there.
— Oscar Wilde

Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it.
— Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891)

Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.
— Oscar Wilde

Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature.
— Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891)

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

Anything becomes a pleasure if one does it too often.
— Oscar Wilde

Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
— Oscar Wilde

Art is the most intense mode of invidualism that the world has known.
— Oscar Wilde

As a rule, 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

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, Lord Darlington, in Lady Windermere's Fan, act 1 (1892)

As for modern journalism, it is not my business to defend it. It justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest.
— Oscar Wilde

As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid.
— Oscar Wilde

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

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
— Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891)

As soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.
— Oscar Wilde

At six o'clock we cleaned our cells,
At seven all was still,
But the sough and swing of a mighty wing
The prison seemed to fill,
For the Lord of Death with icy breath
Had entered in to kill.
— Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

Bad artists always admire each other’s work.
— Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891)

Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privileges of the rich.
— Oscar Wilde

Being natural is simply a pose.
— Oscar Wilde

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Darlington, in Lady Windermere's Fan, act 2 (1892)

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
— Oscar Wilde

But what is the good of friendship if one caanot say exactly what one means? Anybody can say charming things and try to please and to flatter, but a true friend always says unpleasant things, and does not mind giving pain. Indeed, if he is a really true friend he prefers it, for he knows that then he is going good.
— Oscar Wilde

By persistently remaining single, a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation. Men should be more careful.
— Oscar Wilde, Miss Prism, in The Importance of Being Earnest act 2 (1895)

Caricature is the tribute that mediocrity pays to genius.
— Oscar Wilde

Certainly, a great deal may be done by means of cheap entertainments, as you say, Lord Illingworth. Dear Dr. Daubeny, our rector here, provides, with the assistance of his curates, really admirable recreations for the poor during the winter. And much good may be done by means of a magic lantern, or a missionary, or some popular amusement of that kind.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Hunstanton in A Woman of No Importance, act 1 (1893)

Charity creates a multitude of sins.
— Oscar Wilde

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely if ever do they forgive them.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 2 (1893), later repeated by Mrs. Arbuthnot in act 4

Children have a natural antipathy to books--handicraft should be the basis of education. Boys and girls should be taught to use their hands to make something, and they would be less apt to destroy and be mischievous.
— Oscar Wilde

Clever people never listen and stupid people never talk.
— Oscar Wilde

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.
— Oscar Wilde

Conscience makes egotists of us all.
— Oscar Wilde

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
— Oscar Wilde

Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

Cultivated leisure is the aim of man.
— Oscar Wilde, Fortnightly Review

Mrs. Allonby: Curious thing, plain women are always jealous of their husbands, beautiful women never are!
Lord Illingworth: Beautiful women never have time. They are always so occupied in being jealous of other people's husbands.
— Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance, act 1 (1893)

Dammit, sir, it is your duty to get married. You can't be always living for pleasure.
— Oscar Wilde

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
— Oscar Wilde

Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
— Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
— Oscar Wilde

Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 2 (1893)

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
— Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism

Divorces are made in Heaven.
— Oscar Wilde, Algernon, in The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Don't be misled into the paths of virtue.
— Oscar Wilde

Don't talk about action ... Its basis is the lack of imagination.It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
— Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891)

Dullness is the coming of age of seriousness.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

Duty is what one expects from others, it is not what one does oneself.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 2 (1893)

Each class preaches the importance of those virtures it need not exercise. The rich harp on the value of thrift, the idle grow eloquent over the dignity of labor.
— Oscar Wilde

Each time one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it.
— Oscar Wilde

Ernest is invariably calm. That is one of the reasons he always gets on my nerves. Nothing is so aggravating as calmness. There is something positively brutal about the good temper of most modern men. I wonder we women stand it as well as we do.
— Oscar Wilde, Mrs. Allonby in A Woman of No Importance, act 2 (1893)

Education is an admirable thing, but it well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
— Oscar Wilde, Intentions

Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography.
— 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, An Ideal Husband (1895)

Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
— Oscar Wilde

Everyone should keep someone else's diary.
— Oscar Wilde

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken up teaching.
— Oscar Wilde

Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.
— Oscar Wilde

Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect — simply a confession of failures.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
— Oscar Wilde

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

Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Football is all very well a good game for rough girls, but not for delicate boys.
— Oscar Wilde

For an artist to marry his model is as fatal as for a gourmet to marry his cook: the one gets no sittings, and the other gets no dinners.
— Oscar Wilde, "London Models," in the January 1889 issue of English Illustrated Magazine

Frank Harris has been received in all the great houses — once!
— Oscar Wilde

Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.
— Oscar Wilde

From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it.
— Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891)

Good people do a great deal of harm in this world. Certainly the greatest harm that they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance.
— Oscar Wilde

Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws.
— Oscar Wilde

Good women have such limited views of life, their horizon is so small, their interests are so petty.
— Oscar Wilde

Greek dress was in its essence inartistic. Nothing should reveal the body but the body.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

He covered page after page with wild words of sorrow and wilder words of pain. There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

He hadn't a single redeeming vice.
— Oscar Wilde

He had the sort of face that, once seen, is never remembered.
— Oscar Wilde

He has been most interesting on the subject of Patagonia. Savages seem to have quite the same views as cultured people on almost all subjects. They are excessively advanced.
— Oscar Wilde, Mrs. Allonby in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

He has nothing. He looks everything. What more can one desire?
— Oscar Wilde

He [Bernard Shaw] hasn't an enemy in the world, and none of his friends like him.
— Oscar Wilde, quoted in Shaw, Sixteen Self Sketches

He is excellent company, and he has one of the best cooks in London, and after a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Caroline in A Woman of No Importance, act 2 (1893)

He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

He must be quite respectable. One has never heard his name before in the whole course of one's life, which speaks volumes for a man, nowadays.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Caroline in A Woman of No Importance, act 1 (1893)

He must have a truly romantic nature, for he weeps when there is nothing at all to weep about.
— Oscar Wilde, "The Remarkable Rocket," in The Happy Prince and Other Tales

He paid some attention to the management of his collieries in the Midland counties, excusing himself for this taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of having coal was that it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of burning wood on his own hearth.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

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, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.
— Oscar Wilde

He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone.
— Oscar Wilde, The Czarevitch, in Vera, or the Nihilists, act 2. Referring to Prince Paul.

Hearts live by being wounded. Pleasure may turn a heart to stone, riches may make it callous, but sorrow — oh, sorrow cannot break it.
— Oscar Wilde, Hester in A Woman of No Importance, act 4 (1893)

Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary: when her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief.
— Oscar Wilde

Here is the first passionate love-letter I have ever written in my life. Strange, that my first passionate love-letter should have been addressed to a dead girl. Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent people we call the dead?
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

Hesitation of any kind is a sign of mental decay in the young, of physical weakness in the old.
— Oscar Wilde

High hopes were once formed of democracy, but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.
— Oscar Wilde

How charming you are, dear Lord Illingworth. You always find out that one's most glaring fault is one's most important virtue. You have the most comforting views of life.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Hunstanton in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

How clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Hunstanton in A Woman of No Importance, act 2 (1893)

"How dreadful!" cried Lord Henry. "I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect."
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

How many men there are in modern life who would like to see their past burning to white ashes before them?
— Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband (1895)

How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. ... If it was only the other way! If it was I who were to be always young, and the picture that were to grow old! For this — for this — I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give!"
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that the Soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver.
— Oscar Wilde, "The Fisherman and his Soul"

Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, History would have been different.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don’t talk politics.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Goring, in An Ideal Husband, act 1 (1895)

I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.
— Oscar Wilde

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Goring, in An Ideal Husband, act 1 (1895)

I am always astonishing myself. It is the only thing that makes life worth living.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity to find out each other's characters before marriage, which I think is never advisable.
— Oscar Wilde

I am not young enough to know everything.
— Oscar Wilde

I am sick of women who love me. Women who hate me are much more interesting.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.
— Oscar Wilde

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.
— Oscar Wilde

I can resist everything except temptation.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

I can sympathise with everything, except suffering.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose that it comes from the fact that none of us can stand people having the same faults as ourselves.
— Oscar Wilde

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
— Oscar Wilde

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.
— Oscar Wilde

I delight in men over seventy. They always offer one the devotion of a lifetime. I think seventy an ideal age for a man.
— Oscar Wilde, Mrs. Allonby in A Woman of No Importance, act 4 (1893)

I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it, and the bloom is gone.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

I do not play cricket because it requires me to assume such indecent postures
— Oscar Wilde

I don't know that women are always rewarded for being charming. I think they are usually punished for it!
— Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband (1895)

I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean.
— Oscar Wilde, said by Lady Windemere in Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.
— Oscar Wilde, Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest act 2 (1895)

I don't like principles. I prefer prejudices.
— Oscar Wilde

I don't think there is a woman in the world who would not be a little flattered if one made love to her. It is that which makes women so irresistibly adorable.
— Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance (1893)

I don't wish to sign my name, though I am afraid everybody will know who the writer is: one's style is one's signature always.
— Oscar Wilde, letter to The Daily Telegraph

I have made an important discovery … that alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, produces all the effects of intoxication.
— Oscar Wilde, in conversation

I have nothing to declare except my genius.
— Oscar Wilde, remark at the New York Customs, Jan. 3, 1882, though there is no contemporary evidence for it.

I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand.
— Oscar Wilde

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
—Oscar Wilde

I hope you don't think you have exhausted life, Mr. Arbuthnot. When a man says that, one knows that life has exhausted him.
— Oscar Wilde, Mrs. Allonby in A Woman of No Importance, act 4 (1893)

I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and really being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
—Oscar Wilde

I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.
— Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

I know, of course, how important it is not to keep a business engagement, if one wants to retain any sense of the beauty of life.
— Oscar Wilde

I know what conscience is, to begin with. It is not what you told me it was. It is the divinest thing in us. Don't sneer at it, Harry, any more, — at least not before me. I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

I like men who have a future and women who have a past.
— Oscar Wilde

I live in terror of not being misunderstood.
— Oscar Wilde

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all.
— 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 love scrapes. They are the only things that are never serious.
— Oscar Wilde

I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.
— Oscar Wilde

I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement.
— 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.
— Oscar Wilde

I never play cricket. It requires one to assume such indecent postures.
— Oscar Wilde

I never put off till tomorrow what I can do the day after.
— Oscar Wilde

I never quarrel with anyone. My one quarrel is with words. That is the reason I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.
— Oscar Wilde

I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do.
— Oscar Wilde

I never talk during music, at least during good music. If one hears bad music, it is one’s duty to drown it in conversation.
— Oscar Wilde

I never travel without my dairy. One should always have something sensational to read.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

I often take exercise. Why only yesterday I had breakfast in bed.
— Oscar Wilde

I prefer women with a past. They're always so damned amusing to talk to.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
— Oscar Wilde

I quite admit that modern novels have many good points. All I insist on is that they, as a class, are quite unreadable.
— Oscar Wilde

I sometimes think that God in creating man, somewhat overestimated His ability.
— Oscar Wilde, in conversation

I suppose publishers are untrustworthy. They certainly always look It.
— Oscar Wilde, letter

I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy.
— Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance (1893)

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
—Oscar Wilde

Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better.
— Oscar Wilde

If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.
— Oscar Wilde

If a woman really repents, she has to go to a bad dressmaker, otherwise no one believes in her.
— Oscar Wilde

If a woman wants to hold a man, she has merely to appeal to the worst in him.
— 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, An Ideal Husband (1895)

If one tells the truth, one is sure sooner or later to be found out.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it.
— Oscar Wilde, Fortnightly Review

If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in solving the problem of poverty.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

If there was less sympathy in the world there would be less trouble in the world.
— Oscar Wilde

If we men married the woman we deserve, we should have a very tedious time of it.
— Oscar Wilde

If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.
— Oscar Wilde

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
— Oscar Wilde

If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it.
— Oscar Wilde

Ignorance is like a delicate flower: touch it and the bloom is gone.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
— Oscar Wilde

I'm glad to hear you smoke. A man should always have an occupation of some kind. There are far too many idle men in London as it is.
— Oscar Wilde

Imagination is a quality given a man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humour was provided to console him for what he is.
— Oscar Wilde

In a Temple everyone should be serious, except the thing that is worshipped.
— Oscar Wilde

In all unimportant matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential. In all important matters, style, not sincerity, is the essential.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

In America the President reigns for four years and journalism governs forever and ever.
— Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism

In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

In married life affection comes when people thoroughly dislike each other.
— Oscar Wilde

In married life three is company and two is none.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

In my young days, Miss Worsley, one never met any one in society who worked for their living. It was not considered the thing.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Caroline in A Woman of No Importance, act 1 (1893)

In the old day men had the rack; now they have the press.
— Oscar Wilde

In this world, there are two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

Industry is the root of all ugliness.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.
— Oscar Wilde

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
— Oscar Wilde

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Darlington, in Lady Windermere's Fan act 1 (1892)

It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.
— Oscar Wilde

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
— Oscar Wilde

It is a very dangerous thing to listen. If one listens one may be convinced; and a man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a thoroughly unreasonable person.
— Oscar Wilde

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand, no one is more ready than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
— Oscar Wilde

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
— Oscar Wilde

It is most dangerous nowadays for a husband to pay any attention to his wife in public. It always makes people think that he beats her when they are alone.
— Oscar Wilde

It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.
— Oscar Wilde

It is only the gods who taste of death. Apollo has passed away, but Hyacinth, whom men say he slew, lives on. Nero and Narcissus are always with us.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.
— Oscar Wilde

It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.
— Oscar Wilde

It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man's deeper nature is soon found out.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.
— Oscar Wilde, review (May 1885)

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, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 1 (1893)

It's perfectly scandalous the amount of bachelors who are going about society. There should be a law passed to compel them all to marry within twelve months.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Caroline in A Woman of No Importance, act 2 (1893)

It is through Art, and through Art only, that we can realise our perfection; through Art and Art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.
— Oscar Wilde, "Art"

It is very easy to endure the difficulties of one's enemies. It is the successes of one's friends that are hard to bear.
— Oscar Wilde

It is very painful for me to be forced to speak the truth. It is the first time in my life that I have ever been reduced to such a painful position, and I am really quite inexperienced in doing anything of the kind.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

It is very vulgar to talk about one's business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produces a false impression.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.
— Oscar Wilde

It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.
— Oscar Wilde

It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame.
— Oscar Wilde

It takes a thoroughly good woman to do a thoroughly stupid thing.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.
— Oscar Wilde

Land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up.
— Oscar Wilde

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

Learned conversation is either the affectation of the ignorant or the profession of the mentally unemployed.
— Oscar Wilde

Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
— Oscar Wilde

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

Life is never fair...And perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
— Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband (1895)

Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.
— Oscar Wilde

Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. The nineteenth century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac.
— Oscar Wilde

London is full of women who trust their husbands. One can always recognise them. They look so thoroughly unhappy.
— Oscar Wilde

London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce the serious people or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don’t know.
— Oscar Wilde

London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which is never advisable.
— Oscar Wilde

Looking good and dressing well is a necessity. Having a purpose in life is not.
— Oscar Wilde

Lord Illingworth may marry any day. I was in hopes he would have married Lady Kelso. But I believe he said her family was too large. Or was it her feet? I forget which.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Hunstanton in A Woman of No Importance, act 1 (1893)

Lots of people act well, but few people talk well. This shows that talking is the more difficult of the two.
— Oscar Wilde

Lying for a monthly salary is, of course, well known in Fleet Street.
— Oscar Wilde

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
— 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

Manners before morals!
— Oscar Wilde

Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
— Oscar Wilde

Men always want to be a woman's first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about things. What we like is to be a man's last romance.
— Oscar Wilde, Mrs. Allonby in A Woman of No Importance, act 2 (1893)

Men are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not.
— Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance (1893)

Men become old, but they never become good.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

Men know life too early.
— Oscar Wilde

Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.
— Oscar Wilde

Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton. Nothing succeeds like excess.
— Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance (1893)

Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one’s age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality.
— Oscar Wilde

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

More than half modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.
— Oscar Wilde

More women grow old nowadays through the faithfulness of their admirers than through anything else.
— Oscar Wilde

Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualification.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime (1887)

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

Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.
— Oscar Wilde

Most women in London, nowadays, seem to furnish their rooms with nothing but orchids, foreigners, and French novels.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Hunstanton in A Woman of No Importance, act 4 (1893)

Mothers, of course, are all right. They pay a chap’s bills and don’t bother him. But fathers bother a chap and never pay his bills.
— Oscar Wilde

Mr. Whistler always spelt art, and we believe still spells it, with a capital "I."
— Oscar Wilde, in "The New President," Pall Mall Gazette (London, January 26, 1889).

Murder is always a mistake — one should never do anything one cannot talk about after dinner.
— Oscar Wilde

Music makes one feel so romantic — at least it always gets on one’s nerves.
— Oscar Wilde

Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb when one is longing to be absolutely deaf.
— Oscar Wilde

My dear young lady, there was a great deal of truth, I dare say, in what you said, and you looked very pretty while you said it, which is much more important.
— Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance 1893

My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.
— Oscar Wilde

My name has two Os, two Fs and two Ws. A name that is destined to be in everybody’s mouth must not be too long. It comes so expensive in advertisements. When one is unknown, a number of Christian names are useful, perhaps even needful. As one becomes famous, one sheds some of them, just as a balloonist, ... rising higher, sheds unnecessary ballast ... All but two of my five names have been thrown overboard. Soon I shall discard another and be known simply as "The Wilde" or "The Oscar".
— Oscar Wilde

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

Never buy a thing you don't want merely because it is dear.
— Oscar Wilde

Never speak disrespectfully of society. Only people who can’t get into it do that.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Niagara Falls is the bride's second great disappointment.
— Oscar Wilde

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.
— Oscar Wilde

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Preface (1891)

No civilised man ever regrets a pleasure, just as no uncivilised man ever knows what a pleasure is.
— Oscar Wilde

No crime is vulgar, but all vulgarity is crime. Vulgarity is the conduct of others.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

No gentleman ever has any money.
— Oscar Wilde

No gentleman ever takes exercise.
— Oscar Wilde

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did he would cease to be an artist.
— Oscar Wilde

No life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested.
— Oscar Wilde

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
— Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband (1895)

No man should have a secret from his wife; she invariably finds out.
— Oscar Wilde

No married man is ever attractive except to his wife.
— Oscar Wilde

No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.
— Oscar Wilde

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

Nothing is so aggravating as calmness. There is something positively brutal about the good temper of most modern men.
— Oscar Wilde

Nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion.
— Oscar Wilde, Cecil Graham, in Lady Windermere's Fan, act 2 (1892), also in Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, Chapter 1 (1887)

Nothing should be out of the reach of hope. Life is a hope.
— Oscar Wilde, Hester in A Woman of No Importance, act 1 (1893)

Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world.
— Oscar Wilde

Nowdays, all the married men live like bachelors, and all the bachelors like married men.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Hunstanton in A Woman of No Importance, act 2 (1893)

Nowadays people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.
— Oscar Wilde

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
— Oscar Wilde

Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Darlington, in Lady Windermere's Fan, act 1 (1892)

Of course I plagiarize. It is the privilege of the appreciative man!
— Oscar Wilde

Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Oh, I like tedious, practical subjects. What I don't like are tedious, practical people. There is a wide difference.
— Oscar Wilde

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.
— Oscar Wilde

One can survive anything nowadays, except death, and live down anything except a good reputation.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 1 (1893)

One knows so well the popular idea of health. The English country gentleman galloping after after a fox. The unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
— Oscar Wilde

One must have some occupation nowadays. If I hadn’t my debts I shouldn’t have anything to think about.
— Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance (1893)

One regrets the loss of one’s worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one’s personality.
— Oscar Wilde

One should always absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember the details. Details are always vulgar.
— Oscar Wilde

One should always be a little improbable.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
— Oscar Wilde

One should be thankful that there is any fault of which one can be unjustly accused.
— Oscar Wilde

One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.
— Oscar Wilde

One should never listen. To listen is a sign of indifference to one's hearers.
— Oscar Wilde

One should never make one's debut in a scandal. One should reserve that to give interest to one's old age.
— Oscar Wilde

One should never take sides in anything, Mr. Kelvil. Taking sides is the beginning of sincerity, and earnestness follows shortly afterwards, and the human being becomes a bore.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 1 (1893)

One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 1 (1893)

One should read everything. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.
— Oscar Wilde

One's own soul, and the passions of one's friends — those were the fascinating things in life.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

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

One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.
— Oscar Wilde

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
— Oscar Wilde, Mrs. Cheveley, in An Ideal Husband, act 1 (1895)

Only great masters of style can succeed in being obtuse.
— 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

Only the great masters of style ever succeeded in being obscure.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

Only the shallow know themselves.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
— Oscar Wilde

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
— Oscar Wilde

People fashion their God after their own understanding. They make their God first and worship him afterwards.
— Oscar Wilde

People nowadays are so absolutely superficial that they don't understand the philosophy of the superficial. By the way, Gerald, you should learn how to tie your tie better. Sentiment is all very well for the button-hole. But the essential thing for a necktie is style. A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately.
— Oscar Wilde, letter from Paris, May,1900

People who want to say merely what is sensible should say it to themselves before they come down to breakfast in the morning, never after.
— Oscar Wilde

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it has merely been detected.
— Oscar Wilde

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

Pleasure is the only thing one should live for. Nothing ages like happiness.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

Pleasure is the only thing worth having a theory about.
— Oscar Wilde

Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong.
— Oscar Wilde

Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation.
— Oscar Wilde, "De Profundis ", a letter written from prison to Lord Alfred Douglas (1895)

Public opinion exists only where there are no ideas.
— Oscar Wilde

Punctuality is the thief of time.
— Oscar Wilde

Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.
— Oscar Wilde

Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Really, now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.
— Oscar Wilde

Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief.
— Oscar Wilde

Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.
— Oscar Wilde, In Conversation

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.
— Oscar Wilde

Scotland Yard still insists that the man in the grey ulster who left for Paris by the midnight train on the ninth of November was poor Basil, and the French police declare that Basil never arrived in Paris at all. I suppose in about a fortnight we shall be told that he has been seen in San Francisco. It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity.
— Oscar Wilde

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

Sentiment is all very well for the buttonhole. But the essential thing for a necktie is style. A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life.
— Oscar Wilde

Sentimentality is merely the Bank Holiday of cynicism.
— Oscar Wilde

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
— Oscar Wilde

Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.
— Oscar Wilde

She behaves as if she was beautiful. Most American women do. It is the secret of their charm.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

She had more than once changed her husband; indeed, Debrett credits her with three marriages; but as she had never changed her lover, the world had long ago ceased to talk scandal about her.
— Oscar Wilde, in Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, Chapter 1 (1887)

She is absolutely inadmissible into society. Many a woman has a past, but I am told that she has at least a dozen, and that they all fit.
— Oscar Wilde

She looks like a woman with a past. Most pretty women do.
— Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband (1895)

She who hesitates is won.
— Oscar Wilde

She wore too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.
— Oscar Wilde

Sin is the only real colour element left in modern life.
— Oscar Wilde

Skepticism is the beginning of Faith.
— Oscar Wilde

Society, civilised society at least, is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating.
— Oscar Wilde

Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another.
— Oscar Wilde

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
— Oscar Wilde

Something was dead in each of us, And what was dead was Hope.
— 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. For a town or country labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly fed animal.
— Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
— Oscar Wilde, in a letter

Taking sides is the beginning of sincerity, and earnestness follows shortly afterwards, and the human being becomes a bore.
— Oscar Wilde

Talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your first season, you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

That is the reason they are so pleased to find out other people’s secrets. It distracts public attention from their own.
— Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband (1895)

The advantages of the emotions is that they lead us astray.
— Oscar Wilde

The ages live in history through their anachronisms.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

The aim of love is to love: no more, and no less.
— Oscar Wilde

The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one’s clean linen in public.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

The artist must educate the critic.
— Oscar Wilde

The basis of every scandal is an immoral certainty.
— Oscar Wilde

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
— Oscar Wilde

The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.
— Oscar Wilde

The best way to make children is to make them happy.
— Oscar Wilde

Lord Illingworth: The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden.
Mrs. Allonby: It ends with Revelations.
— Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance act 1 (1893)

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
— Oscar Wilde

The clever people never listen, and the stupid people never talk.
— Oscar Wilde, Mrs. Allonby in A Woman of No Importance, act 1 (1893)

The condition of perfection is idleness; The aim of perfection is youth.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, (1892)

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
— Oscar Wilde

The English country gentleman galloping after a fox — the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 1 (1893)

The English have a miraculous power of turning wine into water.
— Oscar Wilde, in conversation

The English public take no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is obscene.
— Oscar Wilde

The extraordinary thing about the lower classes in England is that they are always losing their relations. They are extremely fortunate in that respect.
— Oscar Wilde

The final mystery is oneself.
— Oscar Wilde

The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has yet discovered.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

The General was essentially a man of peace, except in his domestic life.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
— Oscar Wilde, Miss Prism, speaking of her own novel, in The Importance of Being Earnest act 2 (1895)

The history of women is the history of the worst form of tyranny the world has ever known. The tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes.
— Oscar Wilde

The Ideal Man! Oh, the Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says. He should never run down other pretty women. That would show he had no taste, or make one suspect that he had too much. No; he should be nice about them all, but say that somehow they don't attract him. If we ask him a question about anything, he should give us an answer all about ourselves. He should invariably praise us for whatever qualities he knows we haven't got. But he should be pitiless, quite pitiless, in reproaching us for the virtues that we have never dreamed of possessing. He should never believe that we know the use of useful things. That would be unforgivable. But he should shower on us everything we don't want. He should persistently compromise us in public, and treat us with absolute respect when we are alone. And yet he should be always ready to have a perfectly terrible scene, whenever we want one, and to become miserable, absolutely miserable, at a moment's notice, and to overwhelm us with just reproaches in less than twenty minutes, and to be positively violent at the end of half an hour, and to leave us for ever at a quarter to eight, when we have to go and dress for dinner. And when, after that, one has seen him for really the last time, and he has refused to take back the little things he has given one, and promised never to communicate with one again, or to write one any foolish letters, he should be perfectly broken-hearted, and telegraph to one all day long, and send one little notes every half-hour by a private hansom, and dine quite alone at the club, so that every one should know how unhappy he was. And after a whole dreadful week, during which one has gone about everywhere with one's husband, just to show how absolutely lonely one was, he may be given a third last parting, in the evening, and then, if his conduct has been quite irreproachable, and one has behaved really badly to him, he should be allowed to admit that he has been entirely in the wrong, and when he has admitted that, it becomes a woman's duty to forgive, and one can do it all over again from the beginning, with variations.
— Oscar Wilde, Mrs. Allonby in A Woman of No Importance (1893)

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.
— Oscar Wilde

The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 1 (1893)

The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilized being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company.
— Oscar Wilde

The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing at all.
— Oscar Wilde

The mere mechanical technique of acting can be taught, but the spirit that is to give life to lifeless forms must be born in a man. No dramatic college can teach its pupils to think or to feel. It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.
— Oscar Wilde, in Court and Society Review (London, September 14, 1887).

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

The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
— Oscar Wilde

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

The only charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
— Oscar Wilde

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

The only duty we owe history is to rewrite it.
— Oscar Wilde

The only thing that consoles man for the stupid things he does is the praise he always gives himself for doing them.
— Oscar Wilde

The only thing one can do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
— Oscar Wilde

The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.
— Oscar Wilde

The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by always being absolutely over-educated.
— Oscar Wilde

The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to someone else, if she is plain.
— Oscar Wilde

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
— Oscar Wilde

The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.
— Oscar Wilde

The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.
— Oscar Wilde

The poet is the supreme artist, for he is the master of colour and of form, and the real musician besides, and is lord over all life and all arts.
— Oscar Wilde, "Mr. Whistler's Ten O'Clock," Pall Mall Gazette (London, February 21, 1885).

The problem with conversation is that the clever people never listen, and the stupid people never talk.
— Oscar Wilde

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.
— Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
— Oscar Wilde

The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish, and unselfish people are colourless. They lack individuality.
— Oscar Wilde

The reason we are so pleased to find other people's secrets is that it distracts public attention from our own.
— Oscar Wilde

The reason why we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
— Oscar Wilde

The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.
— Oscar Wilde

The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.
— Oscar Wilde, Mrs. Arbuthnot, in A Woman of No Importance, act 4 (1893)

The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy.
— Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance (1893)

The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.
— Oscar Wilde

The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, women merely adored.
— 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

The terror of society is the basis of morals.
— Oscar Wilde

The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true.
— Oscar Wilde

The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
— Oscar Wilde

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
— Oscar Wilde

The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is. Nothing should be able to harm a man but himself. Nothing should be able to rob a man at all. What a man really has is what is in him. What is outside of him should be a matter of no importance.
— Oscar Wilde

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!
— Oscar Wilde, Algernon in The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
— Oscar Wilde

The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.
— Oscar Wilde, Basil Hallward, in The Picture of Dorian Gray Chapter 1 (1891)

The vilest deeds like poison-weeds
Bloom well in prison-air:
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there:
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate
And the Warder is Despair.
— Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

The way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we must see it on the tight-rope. When the Verities become acrobats we can judge them.
— Oscar Wilde, Mr. Erskine, in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

The world has always laughed at its own tragedies, that being the only way in which it has been able to bear them. And that, consequently, whatever the world has treated seriously belongs to the comedy side of things.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

The world has been made by fools that wise men should live in it.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime (1887)

The world is simply divided into two classes — those who believe the incredible, like the public — and those who do the improbable.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

The worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.
— Oscar Wilde

The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years. To hear them talk one would imagine that they were in their first childhood. As far as civilisation goes they are in their second.
— Oscar Wilde

The youth of the present day are quite monstrous. They have absolutely no respect for dyed hair.
— Oscar Wilde

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating — people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
— Oscar Wilde

There are only two ways a man can reach civilisation. One is by being cultured, the other is by being corrupt.
— Oscar Wilde

There are people who say I have never really done anything wrong in my life; of course, they only say it behind my back.
— Oscar Wilde

There are things that are right to say, but that may be said at the wrong time and to the wrong people.
— Oscar Wilde, Hester in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

There is a fatality about all good resolutions. They are invariably made too soon.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

There is a good deal to be said for blushing, if one can do it at the proper moment.
— Oscar Wilde

There is always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies.
— Oscar Wilde

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
— Oscar Wilde

There is hardly a single person in the House of Commons worth painting; though many of them would be better for a little white-washing.
— Oscar Wilde

There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.
— Oscar Wilde

There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
— Oscar Wilde

There is no reason why a man should show his life to the world. The world does not understand things.
— Oscar Wilde

There is no secret of life. Life's aim, if it has one, is simply to be always looking for temptations. There are not nearly enough. I sometimes pass a whole day without coming across a single one. It is quite dreadful. It makes one so nervous about the future.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

There is no sin except stupidity.
— Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891)

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.
—Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

There is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.
— Oscar Wilde

There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about.
— Oscar Wilde, Cecil Graham, in Lady Windermere's Fan, act 3 (1892)

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.
—Oscar Wilde

There is only one real tragedy in a woman’s life. The fact that the past is always her lover, and her future invariably her husband.
— Oscar Wilde

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

There is something tragic about the enormous number of young men there are in England at the present moment who start life with perfect profiles, and end by adopting some useful profession.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

They are awfully expensive. I can only afford them when I'm in debt.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Alfred in A Woman of No Importance, act 1 (1893)

They flaunt their conjugal felicity in one's face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

Mrs. Allonby: They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris.
Lady Hunstanton: Really! And where do bad Americans go when they die?
Lord Illingworth: They go to America.
— Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance, act 1 (1893)

Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they do of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching. Our splendid physique as a people is entirely due to our national stupidity.
— Oscar Wilde

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Those who are faithful know only the pleasures of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

Those whom the gods love grow young.
— Oscar Wilde

Time is waste of money.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

To be good is to be in harmony with one’s self. Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others.
— Oscar Wilde

To be in it [society] is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy. Society is a necessary thing. No man has any real success in this world unless he has got women to back him, and women rule society. If you have not got women on your side you are quite over. You might just as well be a barrister, or a stockbroker, or a journalist at once.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

To be modern is the only thing worth being nowadays.
— Oscar Wilde

To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.
— Oscar Wilde

To be popular one must be a mediocrity.
— Oscar Wilde

To be premature is to be perfect.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

To be really medieval one should have no body. To be really modern one should have no soul.
— Oscar Wilde

To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.
— Oscar Wilde

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
— Oscar Wilde

To get back to one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies.
— Oscar Wilde

To get into the best society, nowadays, one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people — that is all!
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.
— Oscar Wilde

To have been well brought up is a great drawback nowadays. It shuts one out from so much.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Hunstanton in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

To have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact, talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you.
— Oscar Wilde

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
— Oscar Wilde

To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.
— Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband (1895)

To make men Socialists is nothing, but to make Socialism human is a great thing.
— Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

To many, no doubt, he will seem blatant and bumptious, but we prefer to regard him as being simply British.
— Oscar Wilde, Pall Mall Gazette

To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.
— Oscar Wilde

True friends stab you in the front.
— Oscar Wilde

Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.
— Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891)

Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin, but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building.
— Oscar Wilde

Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.
— Oscar Wilde

Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
— Oscar Wilde

Vulgarity is simply the conduct of others.
— Oscar Wilde

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.
— Oscar Wilde, The Duchess of Padua (1883)

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
— Oscar Wilde

We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.
— Oscar Wilde

We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.
— Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost

We in the House of Lords are never in touch with public opinion. That makes us a civilised body.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 1 (1893)

We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and thinks too much to be beautiful.
— Oscar Wilde

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

We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.
— Oscar Wilde

We women adore failures. They lean on us.
— Oscar Wilde, Mrs. Allonby in A Woman of No Importance, act 1 (1893)

What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.
— Oscar Wilde

Lady Hunstanton: What are American dry goods?
Lord Illingworth: American novels.
— Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance, act 1 (1893)

What is mind but motion in the intellectual sphere?
— Oscar Wilde, Intentions

What is said of a man is nothing. The point is, who says it.
— Oscar Wilde

What is the difference between literature and journalism? — Oh! journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read. That is all.
— Oscar Wilde

What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities. Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
— Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891)

What seem to us bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.
— Oscar Wilde, Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest act 2 (1895)

What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.
— Oscar Wilde

Whatever music sounds like, I am glad to say that it does not sound in the smallest degree like German.
— Oscar Wilde

When a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
— Oscar Wilde

When a man says that he has exhausted Life, one knows that life has exhausted him.
— Oscar Wilde

When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.
— Oscar Wilde

When good Americans die they go to Paris.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life. Now that I am old, I know it is.
— Oscar Wilde

When one is in love one begins by deceiving oneself. And one ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance. But a really GRANDE PASSION is comparatively rare nowadays. It is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the idle classes in a country, and the only possible explanation of us Harfords.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

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

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.
— Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband (1895)

When they reached the end of the room he stopped, and muttered some words she could not understand. She opened her eyes, and saw the wall slowly fading away like a mist, and a great black cavern in front of her. A bitter cold wind swept round them, and she felt something pulling at her dress. "Quick, quick," cried the Ghost, "or it will be too late," and, in a moment, the wainscoting had closed behind them, and the Tapestry Chamber was empty.
— Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost

When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.
— Oscar Wilde

Whenever cannibals are on the brink of starvation, Heaven in its infinite mercy sends them a nice plump missionary.
— Oscar Wilde

Whenever people agree with me, I always feel that I must be wrong.
— Oscar Wilde

Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.
— Oscar Wilde, "De Profundis ", a letter written from prison to Lord Alfred Douglas (1895)

While one should always study the method of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely universal. The first is personality, which no one should copy; the second is perfection, which all should aim at.
— Oscar Wilde

Who, being loved, is poor?
— Oscar Wilde, Hester in A Woman of No Importance, act 4 (1893)

Why was I born with such contemporaries?
— Oscar Wilde

Wicked women bother one. Good women bore one. That is the only difference between them.
— Oscar Wilde

Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.
— Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young," first published in the December 1894 issue of the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon.

Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.
— Oscar Wilde

Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.
— Oscar Wilde

Women are a fascinatingly wilful sex. Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.
— Oscar Wilde, The Sphinx Without a Secret

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the two sexes.
— Oscar Wilde, Mrs. Cheveley, in An Ideal Husband, act 3 (1895)

Women give to men the very gold of their lives. But they invariably want it back in small change.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

Women have a much better time than men in this world. There are far more things forbidden to them.
— Oscar Wilde

Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.
— Oscar Wilde

Lord Illingworth: Women have become too brilliant. Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humour in the woman.
Mrs. Allonby: Or the want of it in the man.
— Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance (1893)

Women inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces, and always prevent us from carrying them out.
— Oscar Wilde

Women know life too late. That is the difference between men and women.
— Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance (1893)

Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

Women represent the triumph of matter over mind; men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. They worship us, and are always bothering us to do something for them.
— Oscar Wilde

Women who have common sense are so curiously plain.
— Oscar Wilde

Women's styles may change but their designs remain the same.
— Oscar Wilde

Work is the curse of the drinking classes of this country.
— Oscar Wilde

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
— Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)

You must not find symbols in everything you see. It makes life impossible.
— Oscar Wilde, Salome (1894)

You rich people in England, you don't know how you are living. How could you know? You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. Living, as you all do, on others and by them, you sneer at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season. With all your pomp and wealth and art you don't know how to live — you don't even know that. You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of life, of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing. You have lost life's secret. Oh, your English society seems to me shallow, selfish, foolish. It has blinded its eyes, and stopped its ears. It lies like a leper in purple. It sits like a dead thing smeared with gold. It is all wrong, all wrong.
— Oscar Wilde, Hester in A Woman of No Importance, act 2 (1893)

You should study the Peerage. It is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done.
— Oscar Wilde, Lord Illingworth in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

You talk of atonement for a wrong done. What atonement can be made to me? There is no atonement possible. I am disgraced: he is not. That is all. It is the usual history of a man and a woman as it usually happens, as it always happens. And the ending is the ordinary ending. The woman suffers. The man goes free.
— Oscar Wilde, Mrs. Arbuthnot in A Woman of No Importance, act 3 (1893)

Young men want to be faithful and are not; old men want to be faithless and cannot.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

Young people nowadays imagine that money is everything, and when they grow older they know it.
— Oscar Wilde

Your friendship is dearer to me than any fame or reputation.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)