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Oscar Wilde (Writer)

God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What doessay is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too.
— Oscar Wilde
If it took Labouchere three columns to prove that I was forgotten, then there is no difference between fame and obscurity.
— Oscar Wilde fame
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
— Oscar Wilde wit
Tread Lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow.
— Oscar Wilde read
Lo! with a little rod I did but touch the honey of romance — And must I lose a soul's inheritance?
— Oscar Wilde
And down the long and silent street, The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet, Crept like a frightened girl.
— Oscar Wilde right
Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood.
— Oscar Wilde
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
— Oscar Wilde man
The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. Forspent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all things.
— Oscar Wilde
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
— Oscar Wilde
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
— Oscar Wilde poet
Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
— Oscar Wilde mind
A simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle.
— Oscar Wilde sin
And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
— Oscar Wilde
We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.
— Oscar Wilde language
It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.
— Oscar Wilde advice
The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition.
— Oscar Wilde care
Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance. She is a veil, rather than a mirror.
— Oscar Wilde self
All art is immoral.
— Oscar Wilde
He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one's eyes, and does not look at him.
— Oscar Wilde eyes
le myst
— Oscar Wilde
Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
— Oscar Wilde
I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
— Oscar Wilde
OnAn excellent man: he has no enemies, and none of his friends like him.
— Oscar Wilde friends
I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram.
— Oscar Wilde existence
People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately.
— Oscar Wilde absurd
It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
— Oscar Wilde man
Tell me, when you are alone with him [] Sphinx, does he take off his face and reveal his mask?
— Oscar Wilde alone
One can survive everything nowadays except death.
— Oscar Wilde
Psycholog­y is in its infancy, as a science. I hope in the interests of Art, it will always remain so.
— Oscar Wilde
I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lip.
— Oscar Wilde man
Prayer must never be answered: if it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes correspondence.
— Oscar Wilde prayer
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.
— Oscar Wilde
Fool, nothing is impossible in Russia but reform.
— Oscar Wilde possible
"She said that she would dance with me if I brought her red roses," cried the young Student; "but in all my garden there is no red rose."
— Oscar Wilde you
Be happy, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart's-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty.
— Oscar Wilde
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.
— Oscar Wilde
Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.
— Oscar Wilde people
If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture...In a house, we all feel of the proper proportions. Everything is subordinated to us, fashioned for our use and our pleasure.
— Oscar Wilde man
It is always the unreadable that occurs.
— Oscar Wilde read
His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning.
— Oscar Wilde light
Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.
— Oscar Wilde
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
— Oscar Wilde
is a prose , and so is Browning. He used poetry as a medium for writing in prose.
— Oscar Wilde
Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.
— Oscar Wilde history
There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other—by language, which is the parent, and not the child, of thought.
— Oscar Wilde language
Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography.
— Oscar Wilde man
Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.
— Oscar Wilde
Oh! journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read.
— Oscar Wilde literature
I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood.
— Oscar Wilde live
The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.
— Oscar Wilde history
It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.
— Oscar Wilde
Action [...] is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
— Oscar Wilde dream
It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.
— Oscar Wilde
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
— Oscar Wilde
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
— Oscar Wilde anger
It is to do nothing that the elect exist. Action is limited and relative. Unlimited and absolute is the vision of him who sits at ease and watches, who walks in loneliness and dreams.
— Oscar Wilde dreams
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
— Oscar Wilde
It is chiefly, I regret to say, through journalism that such people find expression. I regret it because there is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.
— Oscar Wilde
To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.
— Oscar Wilde passion
There is no sin except stupidity.
— Oscar Wilde sin
Ah! Don't say you agree with me. When people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
— Oscar Wilde people
England has done one thing; it has invented and established Public Opinion, which is an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force.
— Oscar Wilde ignorance
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
— Oscar Wilde men
One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
— Oscar Wilde man
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
— Oscar Wilde people
Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They're the only things we can pay.
— Oscar Wilde men
I can resist everything except temptation.
— Oscar Wilde
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.
— Oscar Wilde life
I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.
— Oscar Wilde world
My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.
— Oscar Wilde people
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
— Oscar Wilde
My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people's.
— Oscar Wilde
Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
— Oscar Wilde morality
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
— Oscar Wilde stars
In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
— Oscar Wilde world
A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. [Answering the question, what is a cynic?]
— Oscar Wilde man
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. [First used by Wilde in .]
— Oscar Wilde mistakes
I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not.
— Oscar Wilde
What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.
— Oscar Wilde
The growing influence of women is the one reassuring thing in our political life.
— Oscar Wilde
Mrs. Allonby: They say, Lady Hunstanton, that when good Americans die they go to Paris.Lady Hunstanton: Indeed? And when bad Americans die, where do they go to?Lord Illingworth: Oh, they go to America.
— Oscar Wilde good
The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.
— Oscar Wilde youth
The English country gentleman galloping after a fox — the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
— Oscar Wilde man
Kelvil: May I ask, Lord Illingworth, if you regard the House of Lords as a better institution than the House of Commons?Lord Illingworth: A much better institution of course. We in the House of Lords are never in touch with public opinion. That makes us a civilised body.
— Oscar Wilde body
Lord Illingworth: The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden.Mrs. Allonby: It ends with Revelations.
— Oscar Wilde man
Lady Hunstanton: But do you believe all that is written in the newspapers?Lord Illingworth: I do. Nowadays it is only the unreadable that occurs.
— Oscar Wilde believe
Lord Illingworth: Women have become too brilliant. Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humour in the woman.Mrs. Allonby: Or the want of it in the man.
— Oscar Wilde
Gerald: I suppose society is wonderfully delightful?Lord Illingworth: To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy.
— Oscar Wilde society
Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.
— Oscar Wilde
I am always astonishing myself. It is the only thing that makes life worth living.
— Oscar Wilde
Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton. Nothing succeeds like excess.
— Oscar Wilde
The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
— Oscar Wilde future
Children love their parents. Eventually they come to judge them. Rarely do they forgive them.
— Oscar Wilde
First published anonymously in the Saturday Review (17 November 1894)
— Oscar Wilde day
Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
— Oscar Wilde time
The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value.
— Oscar Wilde
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
— Oscar Wilde sad
The only link between Literature and the Drama left to us in England at the present moment is the bill of the play.
— Oscar Wilde men
In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.
— Oscar Wilde

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