Oscar Wilde Quotes
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When people talk to us about others they are usually dull. When they talk to us about themselves they are nearly always interesting.
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I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.
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Fool, nothing is impossible in Russia but reform.
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The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.
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It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly to be regretted, for both their sakes.
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A man who takes himself too seriously will find that no one else takes him seriously.
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Good intentions have been the ruin of the world. The only people who have achieved anything have been those who have had no intentions at all.
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Every impulse we strangle will only poison us.
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I didn't have a life until I went up onstage.
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Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.
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In fact, now you mention the subject, I have been very bad in my own small way. I don't think you should be so proud of that, though I am sure it must have been very pleasant.
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It is a vulgar error to suppose that America was ever discovered. It was merely detected.
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As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.
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Don't use big words. They mean so little.
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The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.
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Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.
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Here is the first passionate love-letter I have ever written in my life. Strange, that my first passionate love-letter should have been addressed to a dead girl. Can they feel, I wonder, those white silent people we call the dead?
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It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist's life is that he cannot realise his ideal. But the true tragedy that dogs the steps of most artists is that they realise their ideal too absolutely. For, when the ideal is realised, it is robbed of its wonder and its mystery, and becomes simply a new starting-point for an ideal that is other than itself.
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Fashion rests upon folly. Art rests upon law. Fashion is ephemeral. Art is eternal. Indeed what is a fashion really? A fashion is merely a form of ugliness so absolutely unbearable that we have to alter it every six months! It is quite clear that were it beautiful and rational we would not alter anything that combined those two rare qualities. And wherever dress has been so, it has remained unchanged in law and principle for many hundred years.
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There is no such thing as a heterosexual male, only men who haven't met Oscar Wilde yet.
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We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbor with those virtues that are likely to benefit ourselves. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets.
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To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.
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If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened. It is simply expression that gives reality to things.
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You silly Arthur! If you knew anything about...anything, which you don't, you would know that I adore you. Everyone in London knows it except you. It is a public scandal the way I adore you. I have been going about for the last six months telling the whole of society that I adore you. I wonder you consent to have anything to say to me. I have no character left at all. At least, I feel so happy that I am quite sure I have no character left at all.