Wilde, Oscar quotes
1856-1900 British Author WitThe best way to make children good is to make them happy.
Wilde, Oscar
Children
Charity creates a multitude of sins.
Wilde, Oscar
Charity
She is absolutely inadmissible into society. Many a woman has a past, but I am told that she has at least a dozen, and that they all fit.
Wilde, Oscar
Disgrace
Once can survive everything nowadays, except death.
Wilde, Oscar
Death and Dying
Dullness is the coming of age of seriousness.
Wilde, Oscar
Dullness
Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.
Wilde, Oscar
Careers
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Wilde, Oscar
Cynics and Cynicism
Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
Wilde, Oscar
Children
The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.
Wilde, Oscar
Books - Reading
As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
Wilde, Oscar
Daughters
Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is usually Judas who writes the biography.
Wilde, Oscar
Disciples
Oh, duty is what one expects from others, it is not what one does oneself.
Wilde, Oscar
Duty
The first duty of life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one as yet discovered.
Wilde, Oscar
Duty
Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.
Wilde, Oscar
Children
All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.
Wilde, Oscar
Charm
The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.
Wilde, Oscar
Critics and Criticism
There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.
Wilde, Oscar
Journalism and Journalists
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 the brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly to be regretted, for both their sakes.
Wilde, Oscar
Journalism and Journalists
It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.
Wilde, Oscar
Change
Bad manners make a journalist.
Wilde, Oscar
Journalism and Journalists
There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.
Wilde, Oscar
Despotism
Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things.
Wilde, Oscar
Despotism
She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.
Wilde, Oscar
Desperation
Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night.
Wilde, Oscar
Despair
It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man s deeper nature is soon found out.
Wilde, Oscar
Character
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
Wilde, Oscar
Death and Dying
For he who lives more lives than one: More deaths than one must die.
Wilde, Oscar
Death and Dying
I am dying beyond my means.
Wilde, Oscar
Death and Dying
It s absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Wilde, Oscar
Charm
Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one s mistakes.
Wilde, Oscar
Common Sense
There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.
Wilde, Oscar
Books - Reading
With an evening coat and a white tie, anybody, even a stock broker, can gain a reputation for being civilized.
Wilde, Oscar
Investments
It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.
Wilde, Oscar
Invention and Inventor
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.
Wilde, Oscar
Cooking
The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.
Wilde, Oscar
Contradiction
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!
Wilde, Oscar
Conspiracy
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Wilde, Oscar
Consistency
It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
Wilde, Oscar
Confession
The fact is, the public make use of the classics of a country as a means of checking the progress of Art. They degrade the classics into authorities. They use them as bludgeons for preventing the free expression of Beauty in new forms.
Wilde, Oscar
Books - Classics
Better the rule of One, whom all obey, than to let clamorous demagogues betray our freedom with the kiss of anarchy.
Wilde, Oscar
Dictators and Dictatorship
A man s very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life.
Wilde, Oscar
Confession
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the two sexes.
Wilde, Oscar
Compliments
Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.
Wilde, Oscar
Dreams
The cities of America are inexpressibly tedious. The Bostonians take their learning too sadly; culture with them is an accomplishment rather than an atmosphere; their Hub, as they call it, is the paradise of prigs. Chicago is a sort of monster-shop, full of bustles and bores. Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry. Baltimore is amusing for a week, but Philadelphia is dreadfully provincial; and though one can dine in New York one could not dwell there.
Wilde, Oscar
Cities and City Life
It is very vulgar to talk about one s business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties.
Wilde, Oscar
Business
That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one s own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.
Wilde, Oscar
Critics and Criticism
Temperament is the primary requisite for the critic -- a temperament exquisitely susceptible to beauty, and to the various impressions that beauty gives us.
Wilde, Oscar
Critics and Criticism
On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one s mind. It becomes a pleasure.
Wilde, Oscar
Critics and Criticism
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.
Wilde, Oscar
Dreams
The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.
Wilde, Oscar
Emotions
The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.
Wilde, Oscar
Critics and Criticism
Civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.
Wilde, Oscar
Civilization
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
Wilde, Oscar
Democracy
Really, if the lower orders don t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility.
Wilde, Oscar
Class
One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.
Wilde, Oscar
Dress
One should always play fair when one has the winning cards.
Wilde, Oscar
Gambling
The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet s dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality.
Wilde, Oscar
Humankind
Always forgive your enemies -- nothing annoys them so much.
Wilde, Oscar
Forgiveness
The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.
Wilde, Oscar
Future
I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
Wilde, Oscar
Humankind
To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.
Wilde, Oscar
History and Historians
Pardon me, you are not engaged to any one. When you do become engaged to some one, I, or your father, should his health permit him, will inform you of the fact. An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be. It is hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself.
Wilde, Oscar
Engagement
Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.
Wilde, Oscar
History and Historians
The longer I live the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us.
Wilde, Oscar
Generations
I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
Wilde, Oscar
Genius
Experience is one thing you can t get for nothing.
Wilde, Oscar
Experience
An ordinary man away from home giving advice.
Wilde, Oscar
Experts
An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship.
Wilde, Oscar
Friends and Friendship
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
Wilde, Oscar
Friends and Friendship
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Wilde, Oscar
Enemies
Misfortunes one can endure -- they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one s own faults -- Ah! there is the sting of life.
Wilde, Oscar
Failure
When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy.
Wilde, Oscar
Happiness
Where there is no extravagance there is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding.
Wilde, Oscar
Extravagance
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
Wilde, Oscar
Happiness
It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way.
Wilde, Oscar
Humankind
We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.
Wilde, Oscar
Experience
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
Wilde, Oscar
Excellence
Like two doomed ships that pass in storm we had crossed each other s way: but we made no sign, we said no word, we had no word to say.
Wilde, Oscar
Hobos
Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves.
Wilde, Oscar
Genius
People who love only once in their lives are shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect -- simply a confession of failures.
Wilde, Oscar
Fidelity
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Wilde, Oscar
Goals
What a fuss people make about fidelity! Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say.
Wilde, Oscar
Fidelity
A true gentleman is one who is never unintentionally rude.
Wilde, Oscar
Gentlemen
A man s face is his autobiography. A woman s face is her work of fiction.
Wilde, Oscar
Faces
Woman s first duty in life is to her dressmaker. What the second duty is no one has yet discovered.
Wilde, Oscar
Fashion
Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old fashioned quite suddenly.
Wilde, Oscar
Fashion
How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?
Wilde, Oscar
Heartbreak
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Wilde, Oscar
Fashion
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Wilde, Oscar
Genius
The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one s clean linen in public.
Wilde, Oscar
Flirting
No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.
Wilde, Oscar
Ethics
Flowers are as common in the country as people are in London.
Wilde, Oscar
Flowers
One s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.
Wilde, Oscar
Fantasy
And now, I am dying beyond my means. [Sipping champagne on his deathbed]
Wilde, Oscar
Famous Last Words
Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
Wilde, Oscar
Family
I can t help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.
Wilde, Oscar
Family
Fashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment the universal.
Wilde, Oscar
Fashion
Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.
Wilde, Oscar
Examinations
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Wilde, Oscar
Gossip
Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.
Wilde, Oscar
Impossibility
The American father is never seen in London. He passes his life entirely in Wall Street and communicates with his family once a month by means of a telegram in cipher.
Wilde, Oscar
Fathers
Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.
Wilde, Oscar
Fathers
Frank Harris has been received in all the great houses -- once!
Wilde, Oscar
Guests
I know, of course, how important it is not to keep a business engagement, if one wants to retain any sense of the beauty of life.
Wilde, Oscar
Meetings
One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed.
Wilde, Oscar
Fiction
I have nothing to declare except my genius.
Wilde, Oscar
Genius
It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one, behind one s back, that are absolutely and entirely true.
Wilde, Oscar
Gossip
I can believe anything provided it is incredible.
Wilde, Oscar
Faith
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
Wilde, Oscar
Food and Eating
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
Wilde, Oscar
Fiction
Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don t listen, and if one plays bad music people don t talk.
Wilde, Oscar
Music
Yet each man kills the thing he loves from all let this be heard some does it with a bitter look some with a flattering word the coward does it with a kiss the brave man with the sword.
Wilde, Oscar
Love
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
Wilde, Oscar
Love
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
Wilde, Oscar
Love
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
Wilde, Oscar
Love
I am not young enough to know everything.
Wilde, Oscar
Knowledge
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating --people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
Wilde, Oscar
Knowledge
Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt.
Wilde, Oscar
Housework
A kiss may ruin a human life.
Wilde, Oscar
Kisses and Kissing
The value of an idea has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.
Wilde, Oscar
Hypocrisy
How clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say.
Wilde, Oscar
Hypocrisy
And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats, none knew so well as I: for he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die.
Wilde, Oscar
Hypocrisy
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.
Wilde, Oscar
Ideals and Idealism
Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature.
Wilde, Oscar
Literature
We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.
Wilde, Oscar
Language
They are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not.
Wilde, Oscar
Husbands
Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.
Wilde, Oscar
Intelligence and Intellectuals
Nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion.
Wilde, Oscar
Innocence
Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf.
Wilde, Oscar
Music
Plain women are always jealous of their husbands. Beautiful women never are. They are always so occupied with being jealous of other women s husbands.
Wilde, Oscar
Jealousy
Private information is practically the source of every large modern fortune.
Wilde, Oscar
Information
I m sure I don t know half the people who come to my house. Indeed, from all I hear, I shouldn t like to.
Wilde, Oscar
Hospitality
Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.
Wilde, Oscar
Interviews
Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.
Wilde, Oscar
Memory
The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all.
Wilde, Oscar
Intelligence and Intellectuals
If one hears bad music, it is one s duty to drown it by one s conversation.
Wilde, Oscar
Music
The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes.
Wilde, Oscar
Husbands
When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.
Wilde, Oscar
Marriage
No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.
Wilde, Oscar
Martyrdom
The mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.
Wilde, Oscar
Learning
One knows so well the popular idea of health. The English country gentleman galloping after a fox -- the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
Wilde, Oscar
Hunting
In old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press.
Wilde, Oscar
Media
We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the brim -- objects press around us, filling the mind with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death.
Wilde, Oscar
Life and Living
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Wilde, Oscar
Life and Living
The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him.
Wilde, Oscar
Life and Living
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
Wilde, Oscar
Literature
Life! Life! Don t let us go to life for our fulfillment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic
Wilde, Oscar
Life and Living
If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.
Wilde, Oscar
Loyalty
My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don t know anything at all.
Wilde, Oscar
Maturity
To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.
Wilde, Oscar
Inaction
Ignorance is like a delicate fruit; touch it, and the bloom is gone.
Wilde, Oscar
Ignorance
Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a mauvais quart d heure made up of exquisite moments.
Wilde, Oscar
Life and Living
Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin, but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building.
Wilde, Oscar
Marriage
The modern sympathy with invalids is morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others.
Wilde, Oscar
Illness
They flaunt their conjugal felicity in one s face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins.
Wilde, Oscar
Marriage
The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action.
Wilde, Oscar
Illusion
On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American man is ever idle, and partly to the fact that no American wife is considered responsible for the quality of her husband s dinners.
Wilde, Oscar
Marriage
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.
Wilde, Oscar
Marriage
When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her.
Wilde, Oscar
Liberty
When a man has once loved a woman, he will do anything for her, except continue to love her.
Wilde, Oscar
Love Ended
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
Wilde, Oscar
Love Ended
The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilized being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company.
Wilde, Oscar
Lies and Lying
As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognize the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as elsewhere, practice must precede perfection.
Wilde, Oscar
Lies and Lying
There s nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It s a thing no married man knows anything about.
Wilde, Oscar
Lovers
In the old times men carried out their rights for themselves as they lived, but nowadays every baby seems born with a social manifesto in its mouth much bigger than itself.
Wilde, Oscar
Human Rights
The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result.
Wilde, Oscar
Human Nature
Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love s tragedies.
Wilde, Oscar
Infidelity
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
Wilde, Oscar
Painters and Painting
Cultivated leisure is the aim of man.
Wilde, Oscar
Leisure
Who, being loved, is poor?
Wilde, Oscar
Poverty and The Poor
It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.
Wilde, Oscar
Modern and Modernism
Imagination is a quality given a man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.
Wilde, Oscar
Imagination
The way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we must see it on the tight-rope. When the Verities become acrobats we can judge them.
Wilde, Oscar
Paradox
My great mistake, the fault for which I can t forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.
Wilde, Oscar
Individuality
Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. The nineteenth century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac.
Wilde, Oscar
Literature
Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other s character before marriage, which is never advisable.
Wilde, Oscar
Marriage
A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.
Wilde, Oscar
Men and Women
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
Wilde, Oscar
Men and Women
The fact is, you have fallen lately, Cecily, into a bad habit of thinking for yourself. You should give it up. It is not quite womanly... men don t like it.
Wilde, Oscar
Men and Women
The condition of perfection is idleness: the aim of perfection is youth.
Wilde, Oscar
Perfection
Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.
Wilde, Oscar
Men and Women
Morality is the attitude we adopt toward people whom we personally dislike.
Wilde, Oscar
Morality
Nothing succeeds like success.
Wilde, Oscar
Success
Pleasure is Nature s test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.
Wilde, Oscar
Pleasure
Lord Illingworth: All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. Mrs. Allonby: No man does. That is his.
Wilde, Oscar
Mothers
The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.
Wilde, Oscar
Perfection
The sign of a Philistine age is the cry of immorality against art.
Wilde, Oscar
Obscenity
There is no such thing as morality or immorality in thought. There is immoral emotion.
Wilde, Oscar
Morality
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Wilde, Oscar
People, Other
I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do.
Wilde, Oscar
Moralists
A man who moralizes is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralizes is invariably plain.
Wilde, Oscar
Moralists
If a man needs an elaborate tombstone in order to remain in the memory of his country, it is clear that his living at all was an act of absolute superfluity.
Wilde, Oscar
Monuments
Only mediocrities progress. An artist revolves in a cycle of masterpieces, the first of which is no less perfect than the last.
Wilde, Oscar
Progress
When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old, I know it is.
Wilde, Oscar
Money
There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.
Wilde, Oscar
Money
A pessimist is one who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
Wilde, Oscar
Pessimism
Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.
Wilde, Oscar
Philanthropists
To make men Socialists is nothing, but to make Socialism human is a great thing.
Wilde, Oscar
Socializing and Socialism
In this world there are two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst.
Wilde, Oscar
Tragedies
What is mind but motion in the intellectual sphere?
Wilde, Oscar
Mind
Nobody of any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of sunset. Sunsets are quite old fashioned. To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism of temperament. Upon the other hand they go on.
Wilde, Oscar
Sun
Most of our modern portrait painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything.
Wilde, Oscar
Portraits
We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.
Wilde, Oscar
Prison
I know not whether Laws be right or whether Laws be wrong; all that we know who live in goal is that the wall is strong; and that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.
Wilde, Oscar
Prison
It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.
Wilde, Oscar
Names
Popularity is the only insult that has not yet been offered to Mr. Whistler.
Wilde, Oscar
Popularity
Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong.
Wilde, Oscar
Popularity
Only people who look dull ever get into the House of Commons, and only people who are dull ever succeed there.
Wilde, Oscar
Politicians and Politics
There is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.
Wilde, Oscar
Superstition
I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.
Wilde, Oscar
Reality
I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don t talk politics.
Wilde, Oscar
Politicians and Politics
He thinks like a Tory, and talks like a Radical, and that s so important nowadays.
Wilde, Oscar
Politicians and Politics
As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid.
Wilde, Oscar
Poverty and The Poor
For his mourners will be outcast men, and outcasts always mourn.
Wilde, Oscar
Outcasts
It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.
Wilde, Oscar
Saints
It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.
Wilde, Oscar
Tragedies
The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.
Wilde, Oscar
Plays
In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.
Wilde, Oscar
Platitudes
If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it.
Wilde, Oscar
Property
What between the duties expected of one during one s lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one s death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up. That s all that can be said about land.
Wilde, Oscar
Property
In going to America one learns that poverty is not a necessary accompaniment to civilization.
Wilde, Oscar
Poverty and The Poor
There is something tragic about the enormous number of young men there are in England at the present moment who start life with perfect profiles, and end by adopting some useful profession.
Wilde, Oscar
Professions and Professionals
To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune... to lose both seems like carelessness.
Wilde, Oscar
Parents and Parenting
There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the color, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life s sores the better.
Wilde, Oscar
Sympathy
Sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of sympathy in the world, sympathy with pain does not really diminish the amount of pain.
Wilde, Oscar
Sympathy
I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
Wilde, Oscar
Principles
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
Wilde, Oscar
Motives
Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.
Wilde, Oscar
Murder
The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
Wilde, Oscar
Plays
The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.
Wilde, Oscar
Sales
One can only give an unbiased opinion about things that do not interest one, which is no doubt the reason an unbiased opinion is always valueless. The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing.
Wilde, Oscar
Prejudice
One s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.
Wilde, Oscar
Past
Experience is the name we give to our mistakes.
Wilde, Oscar
Mistakes
Life would be dull without them.
Wilde, Oscar
Mistakes
Newspapers have degenerated. They may now be absolutely relied upon.
Wilde, Oscar
Newspapers
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
Wilde, Oscar
Moderation
There is always something infinitely mean about other people s tragedies.
Wilde, Oscar
Misfortunes
He to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives.
Wilde, Oscar
Present
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.
Wilde, Oscar
Models and Modeling
We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.
Wilde, Oscar
Necessity
When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.
Wilde, Oscar
Prayer
Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
Wilde, Oscar
Obedience
When one pays a visit it is for the purpose of wasting other people s time, not one s own.
Wilde, Oscar
Socializing and Socialism
The Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says.
Wilde, Oscar
Men
A poet can survive anything but a misprint.
Wilde, Oscar
Poetry and Poets
Time is waste of money.
Wilde, Oscar
Time and Time Management
No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.
Wilde, Oscar
Opinions
In America, the President reigns for four years, and journalism governs for ever and ever.
Wilde, Oscar
President
It is always the unreadable that occurs.
Wilde, Oscar
News
There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
Wilde, Oscar
Misers and Misery
A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?
Wilde, Oscar
Smoking
Scandal: gossip made tedious by morality.
Wilde, Oscar
Scandal
He rides in the row at ten o clock in the morning, goes to the Opera three times a week, changes his clothes at least five times a day, and dines out every night of the season. You don t call that leading an idle life, do you?
Wilde, Oscar
Riches
The great things in life are what they seem to be. And for that reason, strange as it may sound to you, often are very difficult to interpret (understand). Great passion are for the great of souls. Great events can only be seen by people who are on a level with them. We think we can have our visions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing visions have to paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine.
Wilde, Oscar
Simplicity
One should never make one s debut with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest to one s old age.
Wilde, Oscar
Scandal
Never speak disrespectfully of Society. Only people who can t get into it do that.
Wilde, Oscar
Society
Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.
Wilde, Oscar
Society
Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
Wilde, Oscar
Scandal
I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.
Wilde, Oscar
Reason
Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.
Wilde, Oscar
Taxes and Taxation
One should never trust a woman who tells her real age. If she tells that, she ll tell anything.
Wilde, Oscar
Trust
I like to do all the talking myself. It saves time, and prevents arguments.
Wilde, Oscar
Talkativeness
The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Wilde, Oscar
Sin
He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing.
Wilde, Oscar
Silence
No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide. I can quite understand how any ordinary critic would be strongly prejudiced against a work that was accompanied by a premature and unnecessary panegyric from the publisher. A publisher is simply a useful middle-man. It is not for him to anticipate the verdict of criticism.
Wilde, Oscar
Publishing and Publishers
I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.
Wilde, Oscar
Simplicity
The worst form of tyranny the world has ever known the tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.
Wilde, Oscar
Tyranny
Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
Wilde, Oscar
Teachers and Teaching
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Wilde, Oscar
Truth
If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
Wilde, Oscar
Truth
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Wilde, Oscar
Truth
Yes; the public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Wilde, Oscar
Public
The English public, as a mass, takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral.
Wilde, Oscar
Public
Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.
Wilde, Oscar
Self-expression
The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.
Wilde, Oscar
Theater
Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it. To the great poet, there is only one method of music -- his own. To the great painter, there is only one manner of painting -- that which he himself employs. The aesthetic critic, and the aesthetic critic alone, can appreciate all forms and all modes. It is to him that Art makes her appeal.
Wilde, Oscar
Techniques
Good taste is the excuse I have given for leading such a bad life.
Wilde, Oscar
Taste
Absolute catholicity of taste is not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art.
Wilde, Oscar
Taste
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Wilde, Oscar
Quotations
It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
Wilde, Oscar
Security
The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.
Wilde, Oscar
Ugliness
The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.
Wilde, Oscar
Psychoanalysis
What is said of a man is nothing. The point is, who says it.
Wilde, Oscar
Slander
I never saw a man who looked with such a wistful eye upon that little tent of blue which prisoners call the sky.
Wilde, Oscar
Sky
Skepticism is the beginning of Faith.
Wilde, Oscar
Skepticism
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Wilde, Oscar
Sincerity
What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colorless. By its curiosity Sin increases the experience of the race. Through its intensified assertion of individualism it saves us from monotony of type. In its rejection of the current notions about morality, it is one with the higher ethics.
Wilde, Oscar
Sin
There is no sin except stupidity.
Wilde, Oscar
Sin
The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.
Wilde, Oscar