Oscar Wilde Quotes

Nature constantly imitates art.

To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour

And, as for what is called improving conversation, that is merely the foolish method by which the still more foolish philanthropist feebly tries to disarm the just rancour of the criminal classes.

I am afraid that we are beginning to be over-educated; at least everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching -that is really what our enthusiasm for education has come to.

The English mind is always in a rage. The intellect of the race is wasted in the sordid and stupid quarrels of second-rate politicians or third-rate theologians.

The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature.

No gentleman ever has any money.

And all, but Lust, is turned to dust In Humanity's machine.

Look at the moon. How strange the moon seems! She is like a woman rising from a tomb. She is like a dead woman. One might fancy she was looking for dead things.

And once, or twice, to throw the dice is a gentlemanly game, But he does not win who plays with Sin in the secret house of shame

Men are such cowards. They outrage every law in the world and are afraid of the world's tongue.

The world has been made by fools that wise men may live in it.

There is only good art and mediocre art.

Imagination is imitative-the real innovation lies in criticism.

The proper school to learn art is not life but art

Education is an admirable thing.

In England people actually try to be brilliant at breakfast. That is so dreadful of them! Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

Anybody can sympathise with all the sufferings of the pal, nevertheless it involves an extremely great mother nature to sympathise by using a friend's achievement.

To be popular I must be mediocre.

A publisher is simply a useful middle-man.

Oh, no doubt the cod is a splendid swimmer - admirable for swimming purposes but not for eating.

Art should never be popular.

At six o'clock we cleaned our cells, At seven all was still, But the sough and swing of a mighty wing The prison seemed to fill, For the Lord of Death with icy breath Had entered in to kill.

All women are rebels.

There is always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies.

Truth is independent of facts always.

To shut one's eyes to half of life that one may live securely is as though one blinded oneself that one might walk with more safety in a land of pit and precipice.

Out of the unreal shadows of night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off... p 207

Grass is hard and lumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects.

If this is the way Queen Victoria treats her prisoners, she doesn't deserve to have any.

I must say... that I ruined myself: and that nobody, great or small, can be ruined except by his own hand.

He is some brainless, beautiful creature, who should always be here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in the summer when we want something to chill our intelligence.

She knew nothing, but she had everything that he had lost.

Prism! Where is that baby?

Never met such a Gorgon . . . I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair.

you will always love, and you will always be loved

Now produce your explanation and pray make it improbable.

Down the long and silent street, The dawn, with silver-sandaled feet, Crept like a frightened girl.

You and I will always be friends." "Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that.

Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day.

Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent people we call the dead?

It can never be necessary to do what is not honourable.

The weather is entrancing, but in my heart there is no sun.

My writing has gone to bits - like my character. I am simply a self-conscious nerve in pain.

I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope.

Any place you love is the world to you.

Lo! with a little rod I did but touch the honey of romance — And must I lose a soul's inheritance?

I delight in men over seventy. They always offer one the devotion of a lifetime.

Oh, why will parents always appear at the wrong time? Some extraordinary mistake in nature, I suppose.

Sometimes it takes courage to give into temptation.