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A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
OSCAR WILDE, The Critic as Artist
Art never expresses anything but itself.
OSCAR WILDE, The Decay of Lying
Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
OSCAR WILDE, The importance of Being Earnest
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
OSCAR WILDE, The Picture of Dorian Gray
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, The Critic as Artist
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
OSCAR WILDE, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
OSCAR WILDE, The Soul of Man Under Socialism
Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.
OSCAR WILDE, A Woman of No Importance
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
OSCAR WILDE, Lady Windermere's Fan
The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.
OSCAR WILDE, The Remarkable Rocket
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy.
OSCAR WILDE, The Importance of Being Earnest
OSCAR WILDE, The Ballad of Reading Gaol
I can resist everything except temptation.
OSCAR WILDE, Lady Windermere's Fan
Do you really think ... that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to. To stake all one's life on a single moment, to risk everything on one throw, whether the stake be power or pleasure, I care not -- there is no weakness in that.
OSCAR WILDE, An Ideal Husband
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
OSCAR WILDE, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Pleasure is Nature’s test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.
OSCAR WILDE, The Soul of Man Under Socialism
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
OSCAR WILDE, Aristotle at Afternoon Tea
When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.
OSCAR WILDE, The Critic as Artist
- Better the rule of One, whom all obey,
- Than to let clamorous demagogues betray
- Our freedom with the kiss of anarchy.
OSCAR WILDE, Libertatis Sacra Fames
It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But ... it is better to be good than to be ugly.
OSCAR WILDE, The Picture of Dorian Gray
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
OSCAR WILDE, The Picture of Dorian Gray
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
OSCAR WILDE, The Picture of Dorian Gray
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.
OSCAR WILDE, The Soul of Man Under Socialism
The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.
OSCAR WILDE, The Soul of Man Under Socialism
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
OSCAR WILDE, The Picture of Dorian Gray
The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.
OSCAR WILDE, The Soul of Man Under Socialism
There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
OSCAR WILDE, The Critic as Artist
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
OSCAR WILDE, The Critic as Artist
The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analysed, women ... merely adored.
OSCAR WILDE, The Ideal Husband
All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.
OSCAR WILDE, The Portrait of Mr. W.H.
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, The Critic as Artist
America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier in history than itself.
OSCAR WILDE, The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde
It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never put one's worship into words.
OSCAR WILDE, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you, and at the end of your first season you will have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact.
OSCAR WILDE, A Woman of No Importance
Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.
OSCAR WILDE, attributed, Lying Fully Clothed
Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.
OSCAR WILDE, An Ideal Husband
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, A Woman of No Importance
The play was a great success, but the audience was a failure.
OSCAR WILDE, attributed, Encore
The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.
OSCAR WILDE, The Picture of Dorian Gray
He has fought a good fight and has had to face every difficulty except popularity.
OSCAR WILDE, Men and Memories
The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich.
OSCAR WILDE, Oscariana
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
OSCAR WILDE, Lady Windermere's Fan
What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities.
OSCAR WILDE, The Critic as Artist
And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.
OSCAR WILDE, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.
OSCAR WILDE. "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young"
Newspapers ... chronicle, with degrading avidity, the sins of the second-rate, and with the conscientiousness of the illiterate give us accurate and prosaic details of the doings of people of absolutely no interest whatsoever.
OSCAR WILDE, The Critic as Artist
All great ideas are dangerous.
OSCAR WILDE, De Profundis
- As a pomegranate, cut in twain,
- White-seeded is her crimson mouth.
OSCAR WILDE, La Bella Donna della Mia Mente
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