Oscar Wilde Quotes
Selection of Wilde's famous quotes (vast collection of his aphorisms can be found here):
There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Life is too much important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.
Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their life a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
I have made an important discovery... that alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, produces all the effect of intoxication.
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.
Ah! Don't say you agree with me. When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.
It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one, behind one's back, that are absolutely and entirely true.
I can believe anything as long as it is incredible.
An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
It is very easy to endure the difficulties of one's enemies. It is the successes of one's friends that are hard to bear.
I often take exercise. Why only yesterday I had breakfast in bed.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.
There is no sin except stupidity.
Time is a waste of money.
The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.
Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.
An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.
Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.