Oscar Wilde Quotes

Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

~ Oscar Wilde

Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.

~ Oscar Wilde

I had buried my romance in a bed of asphodel.

~ Oscar Wilde

He is fairer than the morning star, and whiter than the moon. For his body I would give my soul, and for his love I would surrender heaven.

~ Oscar Wilde

The curves of your lips rewrite history.

~ Oscar Wilde

something was dead in each of us,and what was dead was hope.

~ Oscar Wilde

Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger brothers seem never to do anything else.

~ Oscar Wilde

Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.

~ Oscar Wilde

For he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die.

~ Oscar Wilde

My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.

~ Oscar Wilde

It would kill the past, and when that was dead, he would be free.

~ Oscar Wilde

I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me? Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know, now, that when one loses one's good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything. Your picture has taught me that. Lord Henry Wotton is perfectly right. Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.

~ Oscar Wilde

There are two ways to dislike poetry: One is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.

~ Oscar Wilde

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.

~ Oscar Wilde

I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare’s plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.

~ Oscar Wilde

The mimicry of passion is the most intolerable of all poses.

~ Oscar Wilde

With slouch and swing around the ringWe trod the Fools’ Parade!We did not care: we knew we wereThe Devils’ Own Brigade:And shaven head and feet of leadMake a merry masquerade.

~ Oscar Wilde

So much had been surrendered! And to such little purpose! There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape (...)

~ Oscar Wilde

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

~ Oscar Wilde

In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.

~ Oscar Wilde

Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.

~ Oscar Wilde

When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.

~ Oscar Wilde

Would you like to know the great drama of my life? It is that I have put my genius into my life...I have put only my talent into my works.

~ Oscar Wilde

The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

~ Oscar Wilde

Behind the perfection of a man's style, must lie the passion of a man's soul.

~ Oscar Wilde

If you want to be a doormat you have to lay yourself down first.

~ Oscar Wilde

Realize your youth while you have it. Don’t squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing

~ Oscar Wilde

Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.

~ Oscar Wilde

Christ did not die to save people, but to teach people how to save each other. This is, I have no doubt, a grave heresy, but it is also a fact.

~ Oscar Wilde

For what is truth? In matters of relogion, it is simply the opinion that has survived. In matters of science, it is the ultimate sensation. In matters of art, it is one's last mood.

~ Oscar Wilde

For what is truth? In matters of religion, it is simply the opinion that has survived. In matters of science, it is the ultimate sensation. In matters of art, it is one's last mood.

~ Oscar Wilde

The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing.

~ Oscar Wilde

The English novels are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. But one should not be too severe on them. They show a want of knowledge that must be the result of years of study.

~ Oscar Wilde

You can never be overdressed or overeducated.

~ Oscar Wilde

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.

~ Oscar Wilde

We all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man - that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

~ Oscar Wilde

The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.

~ Oscar Wilde

Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.

~ Oscar Wilde

The reason 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

You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one.

~ Oscar Wilde