Oscar Wilde Quotes
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All thought is immoral. Its very essence is destruction. If you think of anything, you kill it. Nothing survives being thought of.
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On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American man is ever idle, and partly to the fact that no American wife is considered responsible for the quality of her husband's dinners.
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Why, what a wonderful piece of luck! Here is a red rose! I have never seen any rose like it in all my life. It is so beautiful that I am sure it has a long Latin name.
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Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude.
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Whatever, in fact, is modern in our life we owe to the Greeks. Whatever is an anachronism is due to mediaevalism.
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Rugby is a good occasion for keeping thirty bullies far from the center of the city.
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To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist — the problem is entirely the same in both cases. To know exactly how much oil one must put with one's vinegar.
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When a golden girl can win Prayer from out the lips of sin, When the barren almond bears, And a little child gives away its tears, Then shall all the house be still And peace come to Canterville.
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What do you call a bad man? The sort of man who admires innocence.
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There are only two kinds of women, the plain and the coloured.
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Lawyers have been known to wrest from reluctant juries triumphant verdicts of acquittal for their clients, even when those clients, as often happens, were clearly and unmistakably innocent.
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It is he who has broken the bond of marriage - not I. I only break its bondage.
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He hadn’t a single redeeming vice.
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All art is at once surface and symbol.
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I like to do all the talking myself. It saves time, and prevents arguments.
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Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good.
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Philanthropy has become simply the refuge of people who wish to annoy their fellow creatures.
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Set in this stormy Northern sea, Queen of these restless fields of tide, England! what shall men say of thee, Before whose feet the worlds divide?
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Civilisation is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt.
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It would leave no room for developments and I intend to develop in many directions.
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A subject that is beautiful in itself gives no suggestion to the artist. It lacks imperfection.
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If I hadn't believed it, then I wouldn't have seen it.
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They have been eating muffins. That looks like repentance.
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There is no such thing as a good influence. Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtures are not real to him. His sins, if there are such thing as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.