Oscar Wilde Quotes

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Oscar Wilde

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Oscar Wilde

I am not young enough to know everything.
Oscar Wilde

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
Oscar Wilde

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
Oscar Wilde

Whenever people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong.
Oscar Wilde

But what is the difference between literature and journalism?
...Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all.
Oscar Wilde

Biography lends to death a new terror.
Oscar Wilde

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

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
Oscar Wilde

Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.
Oscar Wilde

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Oscar Wilde

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
Oscar Wilde

One's real life is often the life that one does not lead.
Oscar Wilde

One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.
Oscar Wilde

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde

Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
Oscar Wilde

To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.
Oscar Wilde

We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.
Oscar Wilde

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.
Oscar Wilde

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Oscar Wilde

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
Oscar Wilde

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar Wilde

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
Oscar Wilde

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
Oscar Wilde

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
Oscar Wilde

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
Oscar Wilde

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
Oscar Wilde

I can resist anything but temptation.
Oscar Wilde

The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.
Oscar Wilde

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde

When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
Oscar Wilde

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
Oscar Wilde

We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.
Oscar Wilde

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Oscar Wilde

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.
Oscar Wilde

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
Oscar Wilde

Wisdom comes with winters.
Oscar Wilde

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

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

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

Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons.
Oscar Wilde

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
Oscar Wilde

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.
Oscar Wilde

The public has an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.
Oscar Wilde

In the world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
Oscar Wilde

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.
Oscar Wilde

Nothing is so aggravating as calmness.
Oscar Wilde

It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
Oscar Wilde

Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another.
Oscar Wilde

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

Action: the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
Oscar Wilde

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
Oscar Wilde

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
Oscar Wilde

There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.
Oscar Wilde

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
Oscar Wilde

Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude.
Oscar Wilde

Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.
Oscar Wilde

He hadn't a single redeeming vice.
Oscar Wilde

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.
Oscar Wilde

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde

Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
Oscar Wilde

Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
Oscar Wilde