Oscar Wilde Quotes

When people talk to me about the weather, I always feel they mean something else.

Duty is what one expects from others.

The artistic life is a long, lovely suicide.

we always misunderstood ourselves, and rarely understood others

The mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.

The English have a miraculous power of turning wine into water.

I may have said the same thing before... but my explanation, I am sure, will always be different.

Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything.

Like two doomed ships that pass in storm we had crossed each other's way: but we made no sign, we said no word, we had no word to say.

What is beautiful is a joy for all seasons.

Whatever, in fact, is modern in our life we owe to the Greeks. Whatever is an anachronism is due to mediaevalism.

Ah! happy day they whose hearts can break And peace of pardon win! How else may man make straight his plan And cleanse his soul from Sin? How else but through a broken heart May Lord Christ enter in?

one pale woman all alone, The daylight kissing her wan hair, Loitered beneath the gas lamps' flare, With lips of flame and heart of stone.

Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.

I never change, except in my affections.

If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.

LORD ILLINGWORTH: The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. MRS ALLONBY: And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy.

He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize

The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

Consistency is the hallmark of the unimaginative.

I can believe anything provided it is quite incredible.

Science is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon eternal truths. Art is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon things beautiful and immortal and ever-changing.

It is always worth while asking a question, though it is not always worth while answering one.

Poets know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.

It would leave no room for developments and I intend to develop in many directions.

If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation.

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

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

I have pleasures, and passions, but the joy of life is gone. I am going under: the morgue yawns for me. I go and look at my zinc-bed there. After all, I had a wonderful life, which is, I fear, over.

There is nothing that art cannot express.

Create yourself. Be yourself your poem.

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.

Even before I met you I was far from indifferent to you.

It is only through Art and through Art only that we can realize our perfection; Through Art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

Learn to differentiate between ignorance and stupidity.

To make men Socialists is nothing, but to make Socialism human is a great thing.

Intuition is a strange instinct that tells a woman she is right, whether she is or not.

Without order nothing can exist-without chaos nothing can evolve. Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Tea is the only simple pleasure left to us.

The Americans are certainly hero-worshipers, and always take their heroes from the criminal classes.

More women grow old nowadays through the faithfulness of their admirers than through anything else.

Bad artists always admire each others work.

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.

Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.

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

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

There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.