Oscar Wilde Quotes

Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

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

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The...

Then she gave one last burst of music. The white Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn, and lingere...

Well, I don't like your clothes. You look perfectly ridiculous in them. Why on earth don't you go up...

The very essence of romance is uncertainty.

Well I won't argue about the matter. You always want to argue about things.That is exactly what thin...

In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.

Lady Bracknell. Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well.Algernon. I’m feeli...

I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time....

Did you hear what I was playing, Lane?I didn't think it polite to listen, sir.

Mary Farquhar, who always flirts with her own husband across the dinner-table. That is not very plea...

The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty, and to someone else if sh...

If it was my business, I wouldn't talk about it. It is very vulgar to talk about one's business. Onl...

They have been eating muffins. That looks like repentance.

I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.

Why is it that at a bachelor's establishment the servants invariably drink the champagne? I ask mere...

I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.

Yes; poor Bunbury is a dreadful invalid.Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time tha...

Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. Mor...

How you can sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out....

To begin with, I dined there on Monday, and once a week is quite enough to dine with one's own relat...

JACK.I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without m...

I could deny it if I liked. I could deny anything if I liked.

LADY BRACKNELLThirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very high...

Even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the p...

Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don't think it right.

I have a business appointment that I am anxious... to miss.

I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is n...

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it...

Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight rope. Wh...

I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long wil...

you have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity.

I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted ...

I find him in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain colours.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can translate into another m...

Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of ...

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault...

He would never again tempt innocence. He would be good.

The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

I'm a man of simple tastes. I'm always satisfied with the best.

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

After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as the...

I can believe anything provided it is incredible.

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

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is...

A kiss may ruin a human life

In fact, now you mention the subject, I have been very bad in my own small way.I don't think you sho...

JACKYou're quite perfect, Miss Fairfax.GWENDOLENOh! I hope I am not that. It would leave no room for...

JACKYour duty as a gentleman calls you back. ALGERNONMy duty as a gentleman has never interfered wit...

I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all. Rela...

But you don’t really mean to say that you couldn’t love me if my name wasn’t Ernest?GWENDOLEN: But y...

Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.

I have never met any really wicked person before. I feel rather frightened. I am so afraid he will l...

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

We live, I regret to say, in an age of surfaces

JACK: I will be back in a few moments, dear Canon. Gwendolen! Wait here for me!GWENDOLEN: If you are...

LADY BRACKNELLTo speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportu...

The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, educ...

MISS PRISMMemory, my dear Cecily, is the diary that we all carry about with us.

I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be...

It is always painful to part from people whom one has known for a brief space of time. The absence o...

I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.

LADY BRACKNELLI had some crumpets with Lady Harbury, who seems to me to be living entirely for pleas...

Lady Bracknell, I hate to seem inquisitive, but would you kindly inform me who I am?

You don't seem to realise, that in married life three is company and two is none.

ALGERNON. I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But ...

JACKThat is nonsense. If I marry a charming girl like Gwendolen, and she is the only girl I ever saw...

My dear fellow, it isn't easy to be anything nowadays. There's such a lot of beastly competition abo...

I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exoti...

Outside the family circle, papa, I'm glad to say, is entirely unknown. I think that is quite as it s...

The doctors found out that Bunbury could not live, that is what I mean - so Bunbury died.He seems to...

I keep a diary in order to enter the wonderful secrets of my life. If I didn't write them down, I sh...

If one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.

I never saw anybody take so long to dress, and with such little result.

So the swallow flew over the great city, and saw the rich making merry in their beautiful houses, wh...

Travel improves the mind wonderfully, and does away with all one’s prejudices.

Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other.

Dear little Swallow,’ said the Prince, ‘you tell me of marvelous things, but more marvelous than any...

Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming about him into his work. The consequence is tha...

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

There is no Mystery so great as Misery.

Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will bring you back tw...

Bronze-limbed and well-knit, like a statue wrought by a Grecian, he stood on the sand with his back ...

Cold were the lips, yet he kissed them. Salt was the honey of the hair, yet he tasted it with a bitt...

And the young Fisherman said to himself: "How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that th...

Art creates an incomparable and unique effect, and, having done so, passes on to other things. Natur...

If something cannot be done to check, or at least to modify, our monstrous worship of facts, art wil...

Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment...

Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely dete...

That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating t...

Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us.

It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way.

The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

People cry out against the sinner, yet it is not the sinful, but the stupid, who are our shame. Ther...

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for...