Oscar Wilde Quotes

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

~ Oscar Wilde

Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things

~ Oscar Wilde

I can quite understand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and admit of its accumulation, as long as he himself is able under those conditions to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life. But it is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance.

~ Oscar Wilde

You have a wonderful personality. Develop it. Be yourself. Don't imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you. If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken from you. And so, try to so shape your life that external things will not harm you.

~ Oscar Wilde

Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices.

~ Oscar Wilde

In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.

~ Oscar Wilde

Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval.

~ Oscar Wilde

It is very wrong to kill any one[.]Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!

~ Oscar Wilde

JACKYou're quite perfect, Miss Fairfax.GWENDOLENOh! I hope I am not that. It would leave no room for developments, and I intend to develop in many directions.

~ Oscar Wilde

Ugh!' snarled the Wolf, as he limped through the brushwood with his tail between his legs, 'this is perfectly monstrous weather. Why doesn't the Government look to it?

~ Oscar Wilde

Come down, O Christ, and help me! reach thy hand For I am drowning in a stormier sea Than Simon on thy lake of Galilee:The wine of life is spilt upon the sand,My heart is as some famine-murdered land Whence all good things have perished utterly, And well I know my soul in Hell must lieIf this night before God's throne should stand.

~ Oscar Wilde

For each man kills the thing he loves yet each man does not diehe does not die a death of shame on a day of dark disgracenor have a noose about his neck, nor a cloth upon his facenor drop feet foremost through the floor into an empty spaceHe does not sit with silent men who watch him night and dayWho watch him when he tries to weep and when he tries to prayWho watch him lest himself should rob the prison of its prey

~ Oscar Wilde

I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.

~ Oscar Wilde

People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion—these are the two things that govern us. And yet—

~ Oscar Wilde

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. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.

~ Oscar Wilde

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

Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on... The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plentitude.

~ Oscar Wilde

There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.

~ Oscar Wilde

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking other people to live as one wishes to live.

~ Oscar Wilde

Most personalities have been obliged to be rebels. Half their strength has been wasted in friction.

~ Oscar Wilde

What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

~ Oscar Wilde

I hardly think that any Socialist, nowadays, would seriously propose that an inspector should call every morning at each house to see that each citizen rose up and did manual labour for eight hours.

~ Oscar Wilde

You cut life to pieces with your epigrams.

~ Oscar Wilde

Indifference is the revenge the world takes on mediocrities.

~ Oscar Wilde

Salomé, Salomé, dance for me. I pray thee dance for me. I am sad to-night. Yes, I am passing sad to-night. When I came hither I slipped in blood, which is an evil omen; and I heard, I am sure I heard in the air a beating of wings, a beating of giant wings. I cannot tell what they mean .... I am sad to-night. Therefore dance for me. Dance for me, Salomé, I beseech you. If you dance for me you may ask of me what you will, and I will give it you, even unto the half of my kingdom.

~ Oscar Wilde

The aim of life is self-development

~ Oscar Wilde

I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection.

~ Oscar Wilde

The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.

~ Oscar Wilde

My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.

~ Oscar Wilde

The well bred contradict other people. the wise contradict themselves.

~ Oscar Wilde

To influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.

~ Oscar Wilde

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

I don't want to see him alone. He says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice.

~ Oscar Wilde

There is nothing like race, is there?

~ Oscar Wilde

It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain.It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.

~ Oscar Wilde

It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in suchan inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, theirabsolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lackof style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give usan impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that.Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements ofbeauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, thewhole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenlywe find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of theplay. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonderof the spectacle enthralls us.

~ Oscar Wilde

Then she gave one last burst of music. The white Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The red rose heard it, and it trembled all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the cold morning air. Echo bore it to her purple cavern in the hills, and woke the sleeping shepherds from their dreams. It floated through the reeds of the river, and they carried its message to the sea.

~ Oscar Wilde

JACKYour duty as a gentleman calls you back. ALGERNONMy duty as a gentleman has never interfered with my pleasures in the smallest degree.

~ Oscar Wilde

In fact, now you mention the subject, I have been very bad in my own small way.I don't think you should be so proud of that, though I am sure it must have been very pleasant.

~ Oscar Wilde

LADY BRACKNELLI had some crumpets with Lady Harbury, who seems to me to be living entirely for pleasure now.ALGERNONI hear her hair has turned quite gold from grief.

~ Oscar Wilde