Oscar Wilde Quotes

Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.

The vilest deeds like poison weeds Bloom well in prison air; It is only what is good in man That wastes and withers there.

It is not wise to find symbols in everything that one sees. It makes life too full of terrors.

There is no such thing as a heterosexual male, only men who haven't met Oscar Wilde yet.

It is exactly because a man cannot do a thing that he is a proper judge of it

The fatal errors of life are not due to man's being unreasonable: an unreasonable moment may be one's finest moment. They are due to man's being logical.

Would you be in any way offended if I said that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection?

It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it.

There's no sin but stupidity.

I won't belong to a club that accepts me as a member

My dear young lady, there was a great deal of truth; I dare say, in what you said, and you looked very pretty while you said it, which is much more important.

Some temptations are so great it takes great courage to yield to them.

Flowers are as common in the country as people are in London.

The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ

This wallpaper is dreadful, one of us will have to go.

Its a beautiful woman's fate to be the subject of conversation where ever she goes

Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance

No man should have a secret from his wife. She invariably finds it out.

And suddenly the moon withdraws her sickle from the lightening skies, and to her sombre cavern flies, wrapped in a veil of yellow gauze.

Private information is practically the source of every large modern fortune.

However, I think anything is better than high intellectual pressure. That is the most unbecoming thing there is. It makes the noses of the young girls so particularly large.

I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the house-tops.

Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones.

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

There is only one real tragedy in a woman's life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future invariably her husband.

A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

All great ideas are dangerous.

My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people's.

Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.

Philosophy teaches us to bear with equanimity the misfortunes of others.

As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.

The greatest of all sins is stupidity.

And now, I am dying beyond my means. (Said while sipping champagne on his deathbed.)

One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed.

There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it

A subject that is beautiful in itself gives no suggestion to the artist. It lacks imperfection.

When a man is old enough to do wrong he should be old enough to do right also.

The truth is never pure and rarely simple.

The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him.

The history of women is the history of the worst form of tyranny the world has ever known. The tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.

There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.

Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief.

Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob.

I put my talent in my work, I save my Genius for my life.

Well, one must be serious about something, if one wants to have any amusement in life.

I expect I shall have to die beyond my means.

To stake all one's life on a single moment, to risk everything on one throw, whether the stake be power or pleasure, I care not - there is no weakness in that.

Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved.