Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
– Oscar Wilde
Some cause happiness wherever they go others whenever they go.
– 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
Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary.
– Oscar Wilde
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
– Oscar Wilde
A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.
– Oscar Wilde
A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
– Oscar Wilde
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
– Oscar Wilde
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
– Oscar Wilde
A true friend stabs you in the front.
– Oscar Wilde
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.
– Oscar Wilde
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
– Oscar Wilde
All art is quite useless.
– Oscar Wilde
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
– Oscar Wilde
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
– Oscar Wilde
Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.
– Oscar Wilde
Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.
– Oscar Wilde
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
– Oscar Wilde
An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
– Oscar Wilde
Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.
– Oscar Wilde
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.
– Oscar Wilde
As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
– Oscar Wilde
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
As yet, Bernard Shaw hasn't become prominent enough to have any enemies, but none of his friends like him.
– Oscar Wilde
At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials.
– Oscar Wilde
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
– Oscar Wilde
Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole!
– Oscar Wilde
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
– Oscar Wilde
Charity creates a multitude of sins.
– Oscar Wilde
Children have a natural antipathy to books - handicraft should be the basis of education. Boys and girls should be taught to use their hands to make something, and they would be less apt to destroy and be mischievous.
– Oscar Wilde
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.
– Oscar Wilde
Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
– Oscar Wilde
Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
– Oscar Wilde
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
– Oscar Wilde
Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.
– Oscar Wilde
Each class preaches the importance of those virtues it need not exercise. The rich harp on the value of thrift, the idle grow eloquent over the dignity of labor.
– Oscar Wilde
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
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
– Oscar Wilde
Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
– Oscar Wilde
Everything popular is wrong.
– Oscar Wilde
Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
– Oscar Wilde
Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.
– Oscar Wilde
Hatred is blind, as well as love.
– Oscar Wilde
He hadn't a single redeeming vice.
– Oscar Wilde
He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
– Oscar Wilde
He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realise.
– Oscar Wilde
He must have a truly romantic nature, for he weeps when there is nothing at all to weep about.
– Oscar Wilde
He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.
– Oscar Wilde
How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.
– Oscar Wilde
How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.
– Oscar Wilde
How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that the Soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver.
– Oscar Wilde
I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.
– Oscar Wilde
I have nothing to declare except my genuis.
– Oscar Wilde
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
– Oscar Wilde
I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
– Oscar Wilde
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
– Oscar Wilde
I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
– Oscar Wilde
I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.
– Oscar Wilde
I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.
– Oscar Wilde
I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.
– Oscar Wilde
I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
– Oscar Wilde
I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.
– Oscar Wilde
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
– Oscar Wilde
If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.
– Oscar Wilde
If one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk.
– Oscar Wilde
If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.
– Oscar Wilde
If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.
– Oscar Wilde
If you meet at dinner a man who has spent his life in educating himself you rise from the table richer, and conscious that a high ideal has for a moment touched and sanctified your days.
– Oscar Wilde
If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
– Oscar Wilde
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
– Oscar Wilde
In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.
– Oscar Wilde
In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.
– Oscar Wilde
In England people actually try to be brilliant at breakfast. That is so dreadful of them! Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
– Oscar Wilde
In every first novel the hero is the author as Christ or Faust.
– Oscar Wilde
In married life three is company and two none.
– Oscar Wilde
It is an odd thing, but every one who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.
– Oscar Wilde
It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.
– Oscar Wilde
It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.
– Oscar Wilde
It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.
– Oscar Wilde
It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.
– Oscar Wilde
Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
– Oscar Wilde
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
– Oscar Wilde
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
– Oscar Wilde
Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.
– Oscar Wilde
Life is a pilgrimage. The wise man does not rest by the roadside inns. He marches direct to the illimitable domain of eternal bliss, his ultimate destination.
– Oscar Wilde
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
– Oscar Wilde
Life is too important to be taken seriously.
– Oscar Wilde
Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us.
– Oscar Wilde
Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.
– Oscar Wilde
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
– Oscar Wilde
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
– Oscar Wilde
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.
– Oscar Wilde
Mrs. Allonby: No man does. That is his.
– Oscar Wilde
Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory.
– Oscar Wilde
My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.
– Oscar Wilde
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
– Oscar Wilde
No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
– Oscar Wilde
No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.
– Oscar Wilde
No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
