Oscar Wilde Quotes

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

~ Oscar Wilde

Because sometimes you have to do something bad to do something good.

~ Oscar Wilde

You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.

~ Oscar Wilde

Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.

~ Oscar Wilde

the costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.

~ Oscar Wilde

loving for their mere artificiality those renunciations that men have unwisely called virtue, as much as those natural rebellions that wise men still call sin.

~ Oscar Wilde

Every one is worthy of love, except him who thinks that he is. Love is asacrament that should be taken kneeling.

~ Oscar Wilde

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

~ Oscar Wilde

If a woman cannot make her mistakes charming, she is only a female.

~ Oscar Wilde

The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole.

~ Oscar Wilde

Most people live for love and admiration. But it is by love and admiration that one should live. If any love is shown us we should recognize that we are quite unworthy of it. Nobody is worthy to be loved... or if that phrase is a bitter one to bear, let us say that everyone is worthy of love, except him who thinks he is. Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling..

~ Oscar Wilde

The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure.

~ 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.

~ Oscar Wilde

Dear little Swallow,’ said the Prince, ‘you tell me of marvelous things, but more marvelous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery.

~ Oscar Wilde

If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart.

~ Oscar Wilde

When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.

~ Oscar Wilde

And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, 'You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.

~ Oscar Wilde

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

~ Oscar Wilde

But youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.

~ Oscar Wilde

If I could get back my youth, I'd do anything in the world except get up early, take exercise or be respectable.

~ Oscar Wilde

Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.

~ Oscar Wilde

The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her latest wonder.

~ Oscar Wilde

What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts.

~ Oscar Wilde

Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art.

~ Oscar Wilde

I left her in the forest of Arden, I shall find her in an orchard in Verona.

~ Oscar Wilde

you have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity.

~ Oscar Wilde

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

~ Oscar Wilde

One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

~ Oscar Wilde

Albeit nurtured in democracy, And liking best that state republican Where every man is Kinglike and no manIs crowned above his fellows, yet I see,Spite of this modern fret for Liberty, Better the rule of One, whom all obey, Than to let clamorous demagogues betrayOur freedom with the kiss of anarchy.Wherefore I love them not whose hands profane Plant the red flag upon the piled-up street For no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reignArts, Culture, Reverence, Honor, all things fade, Save Treason and the dagger of her trade, Or Murder with his silent bloody fee.

~ Oscar Wilde

America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier in history than itself.

~ Oscar Wilde

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

~ Oscar Wilde

We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.

~ Oscar Wilde

It is very difficult sometimes to keep awake, especially at church, but there is no difficulty at all about sleeping.

~ Oscar Wilde

It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never put one's worship into words.

~ Oscar Wilde

Every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character.

~ Oscar Wilde

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect by creating, or at any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and individualism that is to kill it. When it is used with a certain amount of kindness, and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully demoralising. People, in that case, are less conscious of the horrible pressure that is being put on them, and so go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realising that they are probably thinking other people's thoughts, living by other people's standards, wearing practically what one may call other people's second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment.

~ Oscar Wilde

Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.

~ Oscar Wilde

The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.

~ Oscar Wilde

I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.

~ Oscar Wilde

I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience.

~ Oscar Wilde