Oscar Wilde Quotes

All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.

Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.

People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately.

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.

I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.

Conversation should touch everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing.

Life is too short to be taken seriously.

Dammit Sir, it's your duty to get married. You can't always be living for pleasure!

A man who marries his mistress leaves a vacancy in that position.

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.

To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist - the problem is entirely the same in both cases. To know exactly how much oil one must put with one's vinegar.

As one reads history ... one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted.

Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.

I played with an idea, and grew willful; tossed it into the air; transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox.

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

Dear little Swallow,’ said the Prince, ‘you tell me of marvelous things, but more marvelous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery.

The supreme object of life is to live. Few people live. It is true life only to realize one's own perfection, to make one's every dream a reality.

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

The secret of life is in art.

I know not whether Laws be right, Or whether Laws be wrong; All that we know who be in jail Is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, A year whose days are long.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.

The moon in her chariot of pearl

I don't want to earn my living, I want to live.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

Who, being loved, is poor?

You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?

All art is immortal. For emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of art, and emotion for the sake of action is the aim of life.

The one advantage of playing with fire...is that no one ever gets singed. It is the people who don't know how to play with it who get burned up.

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

Memory is the diary that chronicles things that never have happened and couldn't possibly have happened.

Nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion.

They flaunt their conjugal felicity in one's face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins.

One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.

Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.

It is so easy to convince others; it is so difficult to convince oneself.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die.

Just be your self. Everybody else is already taken.

Ones real life is often the life that one does not lead.

As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.

Of course I have played outdoor games. I once played dominoes in an open air cafe in Paris.

There is no feeling more comforting and consoling than knowing you are right next to the one you love.

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.

It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.

Pleasures may turn a heart to stone, riches may make it callous, but sorrows cannot break it. Hearts live by being wounded.