Oscar Wilde Quotes

Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither

A man who pays his bills on time is soon forgotten.

Prayer must never be answered: if it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes correspondence.

Good intentions are invariably ungrammatical.

Everything popular is wrong.

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

Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

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

Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memories.

There is one thing worse than an absolutely loveless marriage: a marriage in which there is love, but on one side only.

Set in this stormy Northern sea, Queen of these restless fields of tide, England! what shall men say of thee, Before whose feet the worlds divide?

She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.

Walt Whitman and Emerson are the poets who have given the world more than anyone else. Perhaps Whitman is not so widely read in England, but England never appreciates a poet until he is dead.

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

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.

Every impulse we strangle will only poison us.

The sky was pure opal now.

What the hell is an oboe?

My desire to live is as intense as ever, and though my heart is broken, hearts are made to be broken: that is why God sends sorrow into the world.

At twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets.

And if it feels good... Feel it!

I tried to visit Albania but I couldn't find it on the map.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimagininative.

The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched garden seemed to be telling the flowers about her.

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

He wanted to be where no one would know who he was. He wanted to escape from himself.

Oh, I love London Society! It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what Society should be.

I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.

Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.

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

To be good is to be in harmony with oneself. Discord is to be forced to be in harmony with others.

The tragedy of growing old is not that one is old but that one is young.

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.

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

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.

When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.

A kiss may ruin a human life

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

When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy.

Even things that are true can be proved.

The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence.

I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.

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.

I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigraph on his tombstone.

Make some sacrifice for your art and you will be repaid, but ask of art to sacrifice herself for you and a bitter disappointment may come to you.

What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colourless.