Oscar Wilde Quotes

I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.

People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.

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.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way.

Literature always anticipates life. It doesn't copy it but moulds it to it's purpose.

Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it.

What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise [in the future. But only if we set out to make this true and anticipate it so we look for the blessings until we find them].

The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want.

What consoles one nowadays is not repentance but pleasure. Repentance is quite out of date.

We are never more true to ourselves than when we are inconsistent.

Extravagance is the luxury of the poor; penury is the luxury of the rich.

The English public takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral.

The security of Society lies in custom and unconscious instinct, and the basis of the stability of Society, as a healthy organism, is the complete absence of any intelligence amongst its members.

Whenever cannibals are on the brink of starvation, Heaven, in its infinite mercy, sends them a fat missionary.

People are either charming or tedious.

As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.

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

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.

I write because it gives me the greatest possible artistic pleasure to write. If my work pleases the few I am gratified. As for the mob, I have no desire to be a popular novelist. It is far too easy.

You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.

The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

A simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle.

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.

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.

Believe me, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is.

What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise for which we are later, in the fullness of time and understanding, very grateful for!

One can live for years sometimes without living at all, and then all life comes crowding into one single hour.

The one charm of the past is that it is the past.

Life is too short to be in a hurry.

Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old fashioned quite suddenly.

Progress is the realization of utopia.

Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.

Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude.

But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins.

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

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

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.

She lives the poetry she cannot write.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

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.

I'm too old to know everything

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

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

The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial.

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

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

Good intentions are invariably ungrammatical.