Quotes by Oscar Wilde
(1854 - 1900)

Category	Quote	E-Mail this quote
Acting	I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
Action	Action: the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
Advice	The only thing one can do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
Age	One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything
Agreement	Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Ambition	Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
America	Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected. - ("The Picture of Dorian Gray")
Americans	The Americans are certainly great hero-worshipers, and always take their heros from the criminal classes.
Americans	We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.
Americans	America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
Arguments	Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
Art	The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.
Bachelors	Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier that others.
Bible	When I think of all the harm the Bible has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it. - (Irish-born author)
Biography	Biography lends to death a new terror.
Books	There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.
Bores	Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude.
Brotherhood	The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality.
Calmness	Nothing is so aggrivating as calmness.
Class	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.
Conceit	I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
Conscience	Conscience and cowardice are really the same thing. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm.
Consistency	Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Country	Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.
Cynics	What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Death	Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
Democracy	The bludgeioning of the people, by the people, for the people
Doubt	To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die.
Education	Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another.
Enimies	A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Experience	Experience is the name that everyone gives to their mistakes.
Fashion	Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Friends	A true friend stabs you in the front.
Genius	The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
God	I sometimes think that God, in creating man, overestimated His ability.
Gossip	The only thing worse than peple talking about you is people not talking about you
Hunting	The English country gentleman galloping after a fox -- the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
Illusion	Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
Information	It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
Insults	Bernard Shaw has no enemies but is intensely disliked by his freinds.
Insults	One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell by Dickens without laughing.
Insults	Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.
Invitations	I must decline your invitation due to a subsequent engagement.
Journalism	The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
Journalism	Journalism justifies its own existance by the great Darwinian principle of the the survival of the vulgarist.
Journalism	There is much to be said in favor of modern jounalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
Kindness	One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.
Life	Life is too important to be taken seriously.
Life	Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
Marriage	Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
Martyrdom	A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Men and Women	Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
Misc.	Only the shallow know themselves.
Missionaries	Missionaries are going to reform the world whether it wants it or not.
Money	It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
Morality	Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally dislike.
Morning	Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
Music	Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.
Opinion	In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
Optimism	The basis for optimism is sheer terror.
Patriotism	Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
Peers	Why was I born with such contemporaries?
People	Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
People	Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
People	It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Pessimists	Pessimist: one who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
Philanthropy	Philanthropy is the refuge of rich people who wish to annoy their fellow creatures.
Poetry	There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.
Poetry	All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
Prejudice	I don't like principles. I prefer prejudices.
Reputation	One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
Saints	The only difference between saints and sinners is that every saint has a past while every sinner has a future.
Scandal	Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
Seriousness	Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
Shakespeare	Are the commentators on "Hamlet" really mad, or only pretending to be.
Shakespeare	Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.
Sincerity	A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Society	It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.
Temperament	A bad temper, like Mr. Whistler's paintings, should never be displayed in public.
Time	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.
Truth	The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Wanger	I like Wagner's music better than any other music. Itis so loud that one can talk the whole time without people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage.
War	As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar; it will cease to be popular.
women	women are a fascinatingly wilful sex. Every women is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.
Youth	I am not young enough to know everything.

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