What Quote » Dramatist Quotes » Quotes by Oscar Wilde »

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of no...  
A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.  
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is abs...  
A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.  
A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of ficti...  
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.   Poetry
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.  
A true friend stabs you in the front.  
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.   Art
Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.  
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.  
All art is quite useless.  
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.   Poetry
All that I desire to point out is the general principle that life imit...   Art
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man doe...  
Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.   Forgiveness
Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.  
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.  
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence with...  
An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at a...  
Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exa...  
Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convinci...  
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known...  
As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, s...  
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascinat...  
As yet, Bernard Shaw hasn't become prominent enough to have any enemie...  
At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials.  
Beauty is a form of genius - is higher, indeed, than genius, as it nee...  
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passio...  
Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The o...  
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 to...  
Charity creates a multitude of sins.  
Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; ...  
Children have a natural antipathy to books - handicraft should be the ...  
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the...  
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.  
Consistency is the last resort of the unimaginative.  
Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative  
Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.  
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for...  
Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell y...  
Each class preaches the importance of those virtues it need not exerci...  
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time ...   Education
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artis...   Art
Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.  
Everything popular is wrong.  
Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.   Experience
Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.   Experience
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it ...  
Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basi...  
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 ...   Poetry
He must have a truly romantic nature, for he weeps when there is nothi...  
He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality ...  
How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on trea...   Marriage
How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far...  
How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that the Soul is wo...  
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It i...  
I am not young enough to know everything.  
I can resist everything except temptation.  
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their g...  
I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often con...  
I have nothing to declare except my genuis.  
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 wicke...  
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sens...  
I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.  
I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immedi...  
I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives....  
I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ...  
I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a b...  
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 us...  
If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to ...  
If one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad musi...  
If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble i...  
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 himsel...  
If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you ...  
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...  
In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older t...  
In England people actually try to be brilliant at breakfast. That is s...  
In every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust.  
In married life three is company and two none.  
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless inform...  
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either cha...  
It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at...  
It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to b...  
It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.  
It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all sc...  
It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying th...  
It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfe...  
It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you wi...  
Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of jou...  
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden wh...  
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far...  
Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.  
Life is a pilgrimage. The wise man does not rest by the roadside inns....  
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.  
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that...  
Life is too important to be taken seriously.  
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called...  
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask,...  
Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us.  
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's ...  
Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, ca...  
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.  
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we person...  
Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by remindi...  
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinio...  
Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when ...  
Mrs. Allonby: No man does. That is his.  
Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory.   Music
Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's ne...  
My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself, is that ...  
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he wou...   Art
No man is rich enough to buy back his past.  
No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not ...  
No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calc...  
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the...  
Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.  
Nothing makes one so vain as being told one is a sinner. Conscience ma...  
Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a gr...  
Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.  
Of course America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it ha...  
Of course I have played outdoor games. I once played dominoes in an op...  
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down ever...  
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are ...  
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marr...  
One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.  
One's past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should b...  
Only the shallow know themselves.  
Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are in...  
Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each on...  
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.  
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would ...  
Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.  
Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.  
Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.  
Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the rem...  
Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity.  
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others t...  
Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.  
She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. T...  
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.  
Some of these people need ten years of therapy -ten sentences of mine ...  
Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.   Success
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.  
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world i...  
The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.  
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is...  
The English country gentleman galloping after a fox - The unspeakable ...  
The General was essentially a man of peace, except of course in his do...  
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction me...  
The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.  
The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is t...  
The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.  
The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for...  
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the yo...  
The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception abso...  
The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of...  
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resis...  
The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is w...  
The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except wha...  
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except geni...   Forgiveness
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.  
The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charg...  
The security of Society lies in custom and unconscious instinct, and t...  
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.  
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.  
The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoy...  
The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily m...  
The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredibl...  
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people...  
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one want...  
There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, theo...  
There is no sin except stupidity.  
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well w...  
There is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. S...  
There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It...  
There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.  
There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and tha...  
These days man knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing...  
They afterwards took me to a dancing saloon where I saw the only ratio...  
This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.  
Those whom the gods love grow young.  
To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.  
To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks...  
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.  
To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To...  
True friends stab you in the front.   Friendship
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.  
What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to reviv...  
When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except c...  
When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husban...  
When good Americans die they go to Paris.  
When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in ...  
When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.  
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.  
Who, being loved, is poor?   Love
Why was I born with such contemporaries?  
Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his re...  
Women are made to be loved, not understood.  
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the d...  
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.  
Yet each man kills the thing he loves, by each let this be heard, some...