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« Best of the Oscar Wilde Quotes #1

– “At twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets.”

– “Beauty is a form of genius – is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon.”

– “Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.”

– “Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.”

– “Biography lends to death a new terror.”

– “By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”

– “By persistently remaining single, a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation.”

– “Caricature is the tribute that mediocrity pays to genius.”

– “Charity creates a multitude of sins.”

– “Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.”

– “Children have a natural antipathy to books – handicraft should be the basis of education. Boys and girls should be taught to use their hands to make something, and they would be less apt to destroy and be mischievous.”

– “Conscience and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.”

– “Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

– “Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

– “Cynic: a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

– “Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”

– “Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.”

– “Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.”

– “Each class preaches the importance of those virtues it need not exercise. The rich harp on the value of thrift, the idle grow eloquent over the dignity of labor.”

– “Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”

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

– “Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.”

– “Everyone should keep someone else’s diary.”

– “Everything popular is wrong.”

– “Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.”

– “Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”

– “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”

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

– “Hatred is blind, as well as love.”

– “He hadn’t a single redeeming vice.”

– “He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.”

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

– “He must have a truly romantic nature, for he weeps when there is nothing at all to weep about.”

– “He was always late on principle; his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.”

– “Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary: when her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief.”

– “How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.”

– “How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.”

– “How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that the Soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver.”

– “I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.”

– “I am not young enough to know everything.”

– “I can believe anything as long as it is incredible.”

– “I have nothing to declare except my genius.”

– “I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.”

– “I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.”

– “I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement.”

– “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”

– “I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.”

– “I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.”

– “I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.”

– “I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance.”

– “I like men who have a future and women who have a past.”

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

– “I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.”

– “I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.”

– “I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.”

– “I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.”

– “I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying – dead.”

– “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”

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

– “If one plays good music, people don’t listen and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.”

– “If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.”

– “If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.”

– “If you meet at dinner a man who has spent his life in educating himself you rise from the table richer, and conscious that a high ideal has for a moment touched and sanctified your days.”

– “If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.”

– “Illusion is the first of all pleasures.”

– “In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.”

– “In America the President reigns for four years and journalism governs forever and ever.”