Oscar Wilde Quotes
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The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.
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Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.
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Intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing.
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The worst vice of the fanatic is his sincerity.
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Philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity. It is their distinguishing characteristic.
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It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.
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The great poet is always a seer, seeing less with the eyes of the body than he does with the eyes of the mind.
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A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
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Indifference is the revenge the world takes on mediocrities.
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Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
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Full frontal nudity is reserved for Adam and Eve!
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A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
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Women are made to be loved, not understood.
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Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.
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The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
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Charity creates a multitude of sins.
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Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.
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It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.
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The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action.
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If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.
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I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.
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To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
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Science is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon eternal truths. Art is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon things beautiful and immortal and ever-changing.
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I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.