Oscar Wilde Quotes
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Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
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I could deny it if I liked. I could deny anything if I liked.
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The simplicity of your character makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me.
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When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy.
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However, it is always nice to be expected, and not to arrive.
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Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole!
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Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
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It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.
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To be entirely free, and at the same time, entirely dominated by law, is the eternal paradox of human life that we realise at every moment.
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Flowers are as common in the country as people are in London.
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I am not at all cynical, I have merely got experience, which, however, is very much the same thing.
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As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.
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Cultivated leisure is the aim of man.
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Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.
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Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.
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All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.
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The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.
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Alone, and without any reference to his neighbours, without any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all.
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I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
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Aestheticism is a search after the signs of the beautiful. It is the science of the beautiful through which men seek the correlation of the arts. It is, to speak more exactly, the search after the secret of life.
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The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.
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It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.
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Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.
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Don't be discouraged if your children reject your advice. Years later they will offer it to their own offspring.