The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
– Oscar Wilde
Society exists only as a mental concept in the real world there are only individuals.
– Oscar Wilde
Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.
– Oscar Wilde
One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.
– Oscar Wilde
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
– Oscar Wilde
Men marry because they are tired women, because they are curious both are disappointed.
– Oscar Wilde
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
– Oscar Wilde
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
– Oscar Wilde
It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
– Oscar Wilde
It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.
– Oscar Wilde
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
– Oscar Wilde
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
– Oscar Wilde
In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.
– Oscar Wilde
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
– Oscar Wilde
Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.
– Oscar Wilde
Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
– Oscar Wilde
Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.
– Oscar Wilde
Biography lends to death a new terror.
– Oscar Wilde
Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.
– Oscar Wilde
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
– Oscar Wilde
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
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.