Top 100 Oscar Wilde On Quotes
#1. You're a big boy," Ana observes, staring blankly into her cup. "You could have said no." "I stand with Oscar Wilde on the subject of temptation.
Don Winslow
#2. If art is to have a special train, the critic must keep some seats reserved on it.
Oscar Wilde
#3. It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.
Oscar Wilde
#4. The middle classes air their moral prejudices over their gross dinner-tables, and whisper about what they call the profligacies of their betters in order to try and pretend that they are in smart society and on intimate terms with the people they slander.
Oscar Wilde
#5. He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigraph on his tombstone.
Oscar Wilde
#6. Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling, and Domine non sum dignus should be on the lips and in the hearts of those who receive it.
Oscar Wilde
#7. The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation. He had never felt it before. Basil Hallward's compliments
Oscar Wilde
#8. The only words worth repeating are from the Old Testament or Oscar Wilde.
Barry Gifford
#9. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature
Oscar Wilde
#10. I envy you going to Oxford: it is the most flower-like time of one's life. One sees the shadow of things in silver mirrors. Later on, one sees the Gorgon's head, and one suffers, because it does not turn one to stone.
Oscar Wilde
#11. The secret seems to be the only way to become mysterious and wonderful modern life. The commonest thing gets a touch fascinating when done on the sly.
Oscar Wilde
#12. Indeed, so far from being humorous, the male American is the most abnormally serious creature who ever existed.. It is only fair to admit that he can exaggerate, but even his exaggeration has a rational basis. It is not founded on wit or fancy; it does not spring from any poetic imagination.
Oscar Wilde
#13. Come, I tell you. You have chattered enough about corruption. Now you shall look on it face to face!
Oscar Wilde
#14. Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.
Oscar Wilde
#15. Many of the great achievements of the world were accomplished by tired and discouraged men who kept on working.
Oscar Wilde
#16. The rich would have spoken on the value of thrift and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour.
Oscar Wilde
#17. And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, 'You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.
Oscar Wilde
#18. I was on the point of explaining to Gerald that the world has always laughed at its own tragedies, that being the only way in which it has been able to bear them. And that, consequently, whatever the world has treated seriously belongs to the comedy side of things.
Oscar Wilde
#19. I tried to visit Albania but I couldn't find it on the map.
Oscar Wilde
#21. as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest.
Oscar Wilde
#22. I remember when I posed as a customs officer so that I could meet Oscar Wilde. I said to him "Have you anything to declare?" He said "I have nothing to declare but my genius." I said "I'll put that down as nothing then shall I?" For I am the wittiest man on Earth.
Simon Munnery
#23. When I started to focus on all the beauty all around me, my whole world became amazingly beautiful.
Debasish Mridha
#24. Cats are put on earth to remind us that not everything has a purpose.
Oscar Wilde
#25. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say at the age of eighteen.
Oscar Wilde
#26. I adore simple pleasures," said Lord Henry. "They are the last refuge of the complex. But I don't like scenes, except on the stage.
Oscar Wilde
#27. Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity.
Oscar Wilde
#28. There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of the beautiful.
Oscar Wilde
#29. Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.
Oscar Wilde
#30. The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all.
Oscar Wilde
#31. the thing whose grotesque misshapen shadow on the spotted carpet showed him that it had not stirred, but
Oscar Wilde
#32. Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.
Oscar Wilde
#33. Valet had reminded him several times of the lateness of the hour, he got up, and going into the next room, placed the book on the little Florentine table that always stood
Oscar Wilde
#34. Indifference is the revenge the world takes on mediocrities.
Oscar Wilde
#35. To achieve all of your goals, focus on one goal at a time.
Debasish Mridha
#36. I was obliged to call on dear Lady Harbury. I hadn't been there since her poor husband's death. I never saw a woman so altered; she looks quite twenty years younger.
Oscar Wilde
#37. Conversation should touch everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing.
Oscar Wilde
#38. Really, if the lower orders don't set a good example, what on earth is the use of them?
Oscar Wilde
#39. If you do not love me, say, nonetheless, you do, for on your tongue falsehood for very shame would turn to truth.
Oscar Wilde
#40. She was a curious woman, whose dresses always looked as if they had been designed in a rage and put on in a tempest. She was usually in love with somebody, and, as her passion was never returned, she had kept all her illusions. She tried to look picturesque, but only succeeded in being untidy.
Oscar Wilde
#41. Although it is useful to specify the incongruities of the fox-hunting ban, the definitive word on the hunt is Oscar Wilde's: "the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable". PAGE NELSON Charlottesville, Virginia
Anonymous
#42. Very little effort is needed to create a prosperous life. Focus on positivity, prosperity, and love.
Debasish Mridha
#43. Was there some subtle affinity between the chemical atoms that shaped themselves into form and colour on the canvas and the soul that was within him? Could it be that what that soul thought, they realized? -- that what it dreamed, they made true?
Oscar Wilde
#44. The Chinese general Sun Tzu said that all war was based on deception. Oscar Wilde said the same thing of romance.
Marco Tempest
#45. Yes, we shall win in the end; but the road will be long and red with monstrous martyrdoms. Oscar Wilde, 1897, on his release from Reading Gaol
Mark Simpson
#46. It was you I thought of all the time, I gave to them the love you did not need: lavished on them a love that was not theirs.
Oscar Wilde
#47. I would not a bit mind sleeping in the cool grass in summer, and when winter came on sheltering myself by the warm close-thatched rick, or under the penthouse of a great barn, provided I had love in my heart.
Oscar Wilde
#48. It was useless. The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks. Then,
Oscar Wilde
#49. The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
Oscar Wilde
#50. Don't spoil him. Don't try to influence him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide and has many marvellous people in it. Don't take away from me the one person who gives to my art whatever charm that possesses: my life as an artist depends on him.
Oscar Wilde
#51. Every good story-teller nowadays starts with the end, and
then goes on to the beginning, and concludes with the
middle ...
Oscar Wilde
#52. The chin a little higher, dear. Style largely depends on the way the chin is worn. They are worn very high, just at present.
Oscar Wilde
#53. Art creates an incomparable and unique effect, and, having done so, passes on to other things. Nature, upon the other hand, forgetting that that imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeating this effect until we all become absolutely wearied of it.
Oscar Wilde
#54. I remembered what you had said to me on that wonderful evening we first dined together, about the search for beauty being the real secret of life ...
Oscar Wilde
#55. You know what Oscar Wilde said, ma'am? He said, "nothing that is worth knowing can be taught". Nothing personal, ma'am ... Carry on.
Charles M. Schulz
#56. The beautiful, passionate, ruined South, the land of magnolias and music, of roses and romance ... living on the memory of crushing defeats
Oscar Wilde
#57. A man who pays his bills on time is soon forgotten.
Oscar Wilde
#58. Well, I don't like your clothes. You look perfectly ridiculous in them. Why on earth don't you go up and change? It's perfectly childish to be in mourning for a man who is actually staying a whole week with you in your house as a guest. I call it grotesque.
Oscar Wilde
#59. Her love was trembling in laughter on her lips.
Oscar Wilde
#60. Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility.
Oscar Wilde
#61. My father told me to go to bed an hour ago. I don't see why I shouldn't give you the same advice. I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of ant use to oneself.
Oscar Wilde
#62. Sweet rains fall on just and unjust alike
Oscar Wilde
#63. I admit that i think it is better to be beautiful then to be good. But on the other hand no one is more ready to admit then i, it is better to be good then ugly.
Oscar Wilde
#64. What the worm was to the corpse, his sins would be to the painted image on the canvas. They would mar its beauty, and eat away its grace. they would defile it, and make it shameful. And yet the thing would still live on. It would be always alive. (Dorian Gray regarding his portrait)
Oscar Wilde
#65. With beat of systole and of diastole One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart, And mighty waves of single Being roll From nerveless germ to man, for we are part Of every rock and bird and beast and hill, One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill. From
Oscar Wilde
#66. AT NINE O'CLOCK the next morning his servant came in with a cup of chocolate on a tray, and opened the shutters.
Oscar Wilde
#67. Nobody of any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of sunset. Sunsets are quite old fashioned. To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism of temperament. Upon the other hand they go on.
Oscar Wilde
#68. And now, I am dying beyond my means. (Said while sipping champagne on his deathbed.)
Oscar Wilde
#69. I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
Oscar Wilde
#70. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason
Oscar Wilde
#71. Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight rope.
Oscar Wilde
#72. Loveless marriages are horrible. But there is one thing worse than an absolutely loveless marriage. A marriage in which there is love, but on one side only; faith, but on one side only; devotion, but on one side only, and in which of the two hearts one is sure to be broken.
Oscar Wilde
#73. A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.
Oscar Wilde
#74. The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination,
made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain,
danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks.
Oscar Wilde
#75. Lean on principles, one day they'll end up giving way.
Oscar Wilde
#76. The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable!
Oscar Wilde
#77. The future success of a nation depends on how diligently and purposefully they educate their children.
Debasish Mridha
#78. He did not wear his scarlet coat, For blood and wine are red, And blood and wine were on his hands When they found him with the dead
Oscar Wilde
#79. The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth.
Oscar Wilde
#81. Besides, if Hans came here, he might ask me to let him have some flour on credit, and that I could not do. Flour is one thing, and friendship is another, and they should not be confused. Why, the words are spelled differently, and mean quite different things. Everyone can see that.
Oscar Wilde
#82. 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
#83. I have been right, Basil, haven't I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare's plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.
Oscar Wilde
#84. I threw the pearl of my soul into a cup of wine. I went down the primrose path to the sound of flutes. I lived on honeycomb.
Oscar Wilde
#85. Those were my last words. To be listed in some book of quotations, alphabetically after Wilde:
Wilde, Oscar (of the wallpaper in his bedroom): "Either it goes, or I do."
Wilding, Adelyn (of the gum splooches on the sidewalk): "Ditto."
Roberta Pearce
#86. The more you focus on the positive and the beauty around you, the more positive and peaceful your life will be.
Debasish Mridha
#87. You are always on the verge of an adventure so dare to find it with true joy.
Debasish Mridha
#88. His nature had developed like a flower, had borne blossoms of scarlet flame. Out of its secret hiding-place had crept his Soul, and Desire had come to meet it on the way.
Oscar Wilde
#89. I was raised on the brothers Grimm, but my favorite fairy tales in the world are Oscar Wilde's - 'The Nightingale and the Rose,' 'The Selfish Giant.' The latter is probably my all-time favorite.
Denis O'Hare
#90. Circumstances are the lashes laid on to us by life. Some of us have to receive them with bared ivory backs, and others are permitted to keep on a coat
that is the only difference.
Oscar Wilde
#91. Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.
Oscar Wilde
#92. An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant as the case may be.
Oscar Wilde
#93. I believe I am to have enough to live on for about eighteen months at any
rate, so that if I may not write beautiful books, I may at least read beautiful
books; and what joy can be greater?
Oscar Wilde
#94. [On Oscar Wilde:]
If, with the literate, I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.
[Life Magazine, June 2, 1927]
Dorothy Parker
#95. I forgot that little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has someday to cry aloud on the housetops.
Oscar Wilde
#96. 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
#97. Excusing himself for this taint of industry on the ground that the one advantage of having coal was that it enabled a gentleman to afford the decency of burning wood on his own hearth.
Oscar Wilde
#98. And all the woods are alive with the murmur and sound of Spring,
And the rose-bud breaks into pink on the climbing briar,
And the crocus-bed is a quivering moon of fire
Girdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring.
Oscar Wilde
#99. When a baby is born here on earth, a star is born in the sky.
Debasish Mridha
#100. Yes, I am a thorough republican. No other form of government is so favorable to the growth of art ... because of the importance it places on the individual, their liberty, self-expression, creativity, and personal responsibility.
Oscar Wilde
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