Oscar Wilde Quotes

"There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral — immoral from the scientific point of view." "Why?" "Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul."

Psycholog­y is in its infancy, as a science. I hope in the interests of Art, it will always remain so.

The beautiful, passionate, ruined South, the land of magnolias and music, of roses and romance . . . living on the memory of crushing defeats

The first thing that struck me on landing in America was that if the Americans are not the most well-dressed people in the world, they are the most comfortably dressed.

Don't imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you.

The worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.

What is abnormal in Life stands in normal relations to Art. It is the only thing in Life that stands in normal relations to Art.

We in the House of Lords are never in touch with public opinion. That makes us a civilised body.

His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language.

I never play cricket. It requires one to assume such indecent postures.

The worst slave owners were those who were kind to their slaves

The Governor was strong upon The Regulation Act: The Doctor said that Death was but A scientific fact: And twice a day the Chaplain called, And left a little tract.

Varnishing is the only artistic process with which Royal Academicians are thoroughly familiar.

I am not in favour of this modern mania for turning bad people into good people at a moment's notice.

Really, if the lower orders don't set a good example, what on earth is the use of them?

America is one long expectoration.

Nowadays, all the married men live like bachelors, and all the bachelors like married men.

The man with a clear conscience probably has a poor memory.

Self-denial is simply a method by which arrests his progress, and self-sacrifice a survival of the mutilation of the savage.

You know what a woman's curiosity is.

I don't like Switzerland; it has produced nothing but theologians and waiters.

Fashion: by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment the universal.

Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they have no qualification.

The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance.

Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a mauvais quart d'heure made up of exquisite moments.

One should never make one's entrance with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest to one's old age.

The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.

I was very much disappointed in the Atlantic Ocean.

Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne.

Who is that man over there? I don't know him. What is he doing? Is he a conspirator? Have you searched him? Give him till tomorrow to confess, then hang him! -- hang him!

Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things.

Newspapers have degenerated. They may now be absolutely relied upon.

For an artist to marry his model is as fatal as for a gourmet to marry his cook: the one gets no sittings, and the other gets no dinners.

Yes, I am a thorough republican. No other form of government is so favorable to the growth of art.

The morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

A beggar hates his benefactor as much as he hates himself for begging.

Comfort is the only thing our civilization can give us.

Things are in their essence what we choose to make them. A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it.

You are young. No hungry generations tread you down. The past does not mock you with the ruins of a beauty the secret of whose creation you have lost

By the artificial separation of soul and body men have invented a Realism that is vulgar and an Idealism that is void.

Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious.

An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant as the case may be.

It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone and can be made as offensive as a brickbat.

An opinion is not necesarily correct just because you're willing to die for it.

The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.

Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand, The hand that held the steel: For only blood can wipe out blood, And only tears can heal

It's the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Thin-lipped wisdom spoke at her from the worn chair, hinted at prudence, quoted from that book of cowardice whose author apes the name of common sense.

Oh! I don't think I would like to catch a sensible man. I shouldn't know what to talk to him about.