Oscar-wilde Quotes

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.Vice and virtue are the artist’s materi...

The pure and simple truth is, the truth is never pure and simple.

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are can be proved. No artist has ethical sympa...

I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous.

[Letter to William Ward, 11 July 1878]Dear Boy, Why don’t you write to me? I don’t know what has bec...

She...can talk brillantly upon any subject provided she knows nothing about it.

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

Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.

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

So with curious eyes and sick surmiseWe watched him day by day,And wondered if each one of usWould e...

She lives the poetry she cannot write.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that

I drink to separate my body from my soul.

America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier in history than ...

My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.

the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loy...

Dorian, Dorian," she cried, "before I knew you, acting was the one reality of my life. It was only i...

For his mourners will be outcast menAnd outcasts always mourn...

Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it.

There were opium-dens, where one could buy oblivion, dens of horror where the memory of old sins cou...

There was something tragic in a friendship so colored by romance.

What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public are to him non-existent

Within this restless, hurried, modern worldWe took our hearts' full pleasure - You and I,And now the...

. . . try as we may we cannot get behind things to the reality. And the terrible reason may be that ...

My Salome is a mystic the sister of Salammbô a Saint Thérèse who worships the moon.

I can write no stately proemAs a prelude to my lay;From a poet to a poemI would dare to say.For if o...

I don't want to earn a living, I want to live.

Hearts Live By Being Wounded

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast,

Marriage is a matter for common sense.""But women who have common sense are so curiously plain, fath...

Ah! that is the great thing in life, to live the truth.

He was a man of most subtle and refined intellect. A man of culture, charm, and distinction. One of ...

Weak? Oh, I am sick of hearing that phrase. Sick of using it about others. Weak? Do you really think...

Do you want to kill his love for you? What sort of existence will he have if you rob him of the frui...

Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.Just as vulgarity...

I love talking about nothing, father. It is the only thing I know anything about.

The drawback of stealing a thing, is that one never knows how wonderful the thing that one steals is...

I have forgotten all about my school days. I have a vague impression that they were detestable.

My doctor says I must not have any serious conversation after seven [o'clock]. It makes me talk in m...

Indeed, as a rule, everybody turns out to be somebody else.

I will love you always, because you will always be worthy of love.

A man's life is of more value than a woman's. It has larger issues, wider scope, greater ambitions. ...

this woman is a genius in the day time and a beauty at night

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast

Never mind what I say. I am always saying what I shouldn't say. In fact, I usually say what I really...

Every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every human being should be the...

Anybody can have common sense, povided that they have no imagination

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

Yet ruled he not long, so great had been his suffering, and so bitter the fire of his testing, for a...

Poor Aubrey: I hope he will get all right. He brought a strangely new personality to English art, an...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.

because to influence a person is to give one's own soul.

He repeated her name over and over again. The birds that were singing in the dew-drenched garden see...

She lives in the poetry she cannot write.

You told me you had destroyed it.""I was wrong. It has destroyed me.

I can now recreate life in a way that was hidden from me, before.'A dream of form in days of thought...

What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you h...

It is perfectly monstrous,' he said, at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things agains...

But do let us go. Dorian, you must not stay here any longer. It is not good for one's morals to see ...

It is the stupid and the ugly who have the best of it in this world

I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses anyone ...

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.

The ugly and stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the pl...

What nonsense people talk about happy marriages!" exclaimed Lord Henry. " A man can be happy with an...

There were poisons so subtle that to know their properties one had to sicken of them. There were mal...

There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the des...

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking other people to live as one wishes to ...

absinthe removes the bitter taste of failure and grants me strange visions which are charming princi...

One can forgive Shakespeare anything, except one's own bad lines.

But just as my philosophy had ceased to interest me as soon as it was formulated into a set of princ...

Some drink to forget, I drink to remember. I drink in order to understand what I mean and to discove...

Certainly the most destructive vice if you like, that a person can have. More than pride, which is s...

WILDE: Oh — Bosie! (He weeps.) I have to go back to him, you know. Robbie will be furious but it can...

Now, I have always wanted to agree with Lady Bracknell that there is no earthly use for the upper an...

I am an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.

Those who pay their bills on time are soon forgotten. It is only by not paying one's bills that one ...

Reading the very best writers—let us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy—is not going to make us ...