Top 100 Quotes About Oscar Wilde: Famous Quotes & Sayings About Oscar Wilde

#1. As Oscar Wilde once wrote, "Morality, like art, means drawing a line somewhere." The question is: where is the line?

Dan Ariely

#2. Am reading more of Oscar Wilde. What a tiresome, affected sod.

Noel Coward

#3. Some believe that as an icon the image of Oscar Wilde is too old and notorious
all right, not an icon, let him be our oriflamme.

Lara Biyuts

#4. Oscar Wilde said that the gods punish us in two ways: first, they don't give us what we want, then, they do. He forgot the third way: we finally see the cost of getting it.

Perry Brass

#5. The only words worth repeating are from the Old Testament or Oscar Wilde.

Barry Gifford

#6. Failure is only the name that we give to our mistakes.
-Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

#7. The truth is the truth. 'Rarely pure and never simple,' as Oscar Wilde would say.

Kami Garcia

#8. 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

#9. Oscar Wilde once quipped, "The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything and the young know everything.

Ian Mortimer

#10. Some of my best friends are Oscar Wilde.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#11. Oscar Wilde may have quipped that one can "never be overdressed or overeducated," but Wilde did not live in our era of overeducated baristas.

Usman W. Chohan

#12. Oscar Wilde turned the world upside down and was able to laugh at it, and hopefully by the time I'm 120 and worn out, that's what I will achieve. I love being alive so much.

John Lydon

#13. History only existed in the human mind, subject to endless revision. 'each man kills the thing he loves'-Oscar Wilde. You kill it before it kills you, but he was wrong. you killed it by accident. thinking you were doing something else. shattering, when all you wanted to do was keep it safe.

Janet Fitch

#14. truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.' " "More Oscar Wilde?" "Galileo, the father of modern astronomy. Another

Kami Garcia

#15. ...Most attackers aren't going to be dissuaded by a witty remark."

"That's profiling," said Mattheus. "Maybe they're Oscar Wilde fans."

"He did have great clothes."

"Proving that stereotypes can span centuries.

Amy Fecteau

#16. I think it was Oscar Wilde who said, You wouldn't care about what other people thought about you if you realized how seldom they actually did.

Maria Semple

#17. 'He's the most charming man. He's the Oscar Wilde of our time. I only had one moment with him in that film and it's a great source of regret. I love spending time with him. He's always very open and effusive. His interest in you is genuine.'

Russell Crowe

#18. Whether it's Dorothy Parker or Oscar Wilde, they're brilliant with genius bon mots. Of course, I find them extraordinary.

Duncan Roy

#19. Oscar Wilde once defined a gentleman as one who never insulted somebody else accidentally.

Douglas Wilson

#20. Oscar Wilde always makes me smile - with respect and admiration. His short stories prove that it is possible to be both sarcastic, even cynical, but deeply compassionate. Just seeing the cover of one of Wilde's books in a bookshop makes me smile.

Orhan Pamuk

#21. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. - Oscar Wilde (Chuck Palahniuk - Pygmy)

Oscar Wilde

#22. Oscar Wilde's "beautiful untrue things" that save the imagination from falling into "careless habits of accuracy.

Harold Bloom

#23. Oscar Wilde wrote, "In this world there are only two tragedies. One is getting what one wants, and the other is not getting it." When

Esther Perel

#24. Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally dislike. - OSCAR WILDE

Timothy Ferriss

#25. Man know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.
-Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

#26. Oscar Wilde summed up the indignation: A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.

Leslie Jamison

#27. He said, You know what Oscar Wilde said - women are meant to be loved, not understood. Applies to both of them, darling. And I nodded, although it seemed to me that I was going to be a woman too and I would like it if someone thought they should understand me.

Amy Bloom

#28. For the same reason people watch action movies or game shows, I guess. Mindless entertainment. Not everything has to be Shakespeare, you know. Or Oscar Wilde. It's fun. Like... gilded porn.

Summer Olsen

#29. 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

#30. We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell. Oscar Wilde

Jessica Shirvington

#31. I think Oscar Wilde wrote a poem about a robin who loved a white rose. He loved it so much that he pierced his breast and let his heart's blood turn the white rose red. Maybe this sounds very sentimental, but for anybody who has loved a career as much as I've loved mine, there can be no short cuts.

Mary Pickford

#32. Du Bois sighed theatrically. "It's as if Oscar Wilde never died for our sins.

Gavin G. Smith

#33. My introduction, implicitly echoing Oscar Wilde's remark that all bad poetry is sincere, grants the benign social decency of [Stephen] King's fictions.

Harold Bloom

#34. Oscar Wilde: In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the

Daniel Klein

#35. The Chinese general Sun Tzu said that all war was based on deception. Oscar Wilde said the same thing of romance.

Marco Tempest

#36. 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

#37. Oscar Wilde said: "Biography lends to death a new terror." Well, memoir adds that same promise to parenting.

Cathleen Miller

#38. 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

#39. All the quips in the world couldn't prevent Oscar Wilde from becoming a lovesick fool.

David Levithan

#40. When asked what he thought of sports, Oscar Wilde replied, I approve of any activity that requires the wearing of special clothing.

Oscar Wilde

#41. He looked just perfect to play Dorian Gray in a film version of Oscar Wilde's novel. Young, graceful, and indecently fresh and handsome, he could easily have worn a badge that said READY FOR DEBAUCHERY!

Sergei Lukyanenko

#42. Wit isn't a useful instrument of defense; it may make a short-run appeal, but it creates a backlash- one saw this in the Hiss case and the Oppenheimer hearings; certainly one saw it in the trial of Oscar Wilde.

Diana Trilling

#43. "Art Imitates life," of course, is that phrase by Oscar Wilde. I called that song "Art Imitates Life" because Oh No was in the studio and he actually came up with that hook. When I was trying to figure out a name for the record, it just kind of made sense.

Talib Kweli

#44. Oscar Wilde once said that to live is the rarest thing in the world, because most people just exist, and that's all. I don't know if he's right, but I do know that I spend a long time existing, and now, I intend to live.

Robyn Schneider

#45. Oscar Wilde said the rich and the poor are equal - they can both sleep under the bridge. Right? Do they have a right? You're damn right they have a right!

Al Lewis

#46. A refusal of nature as a model is a tradition that goes right back to Oscar Wilde.

Todd Haynes

#47. The Oscar Wilde of Welfare State gentility.

Joe Orton

#48. Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.

G.K. Chesterton

#49. 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

#50. [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

#51. The only thing in the world worse than being Oscar Wilde is not being Oscar Wilde.

Oscar Wilde

#52. It's certainly true that I was brought up in that British amateur tradition, the one which always held that if you were reasonably good at cricket, knew one or two Latin texts and a few zingy Oscar Wilde quotes for dinner parties, you were pretty much ready to go and run some outpost in Hindustan.

Damian Lewis

#53. Between Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and Dorothy Parker, everything worth saying has already been said, and said better than i could ever say it

James Patterson

#54. The part of [Oscar] Wilde was exceptionally important to me; the man, his achievements, his wisdom, but his downfall, his disgrace and the tragic and bitter end to it have always fascinated, appalled and attracted me since childhood. It was he who first in some measure vindicated my sexuality.

Stephen Fry

#55. 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

#56. As Oscar Wilde should have said, when bad ideas have nowhere else to go, they emigrate to America and become university courses.

Frederic Raphael

#57. I love Oscar Wilde, still the wittiest writer of anyone, dead or living.

Christopher Buckley

#58. As Oscar Wilde says, thirty-five is the perfect age for a woman, so much so that many women have decided to adopt it for the rest of their lives.

Helen Fielding

#59. The way to stop feeling guilty is to read stuff - I'm not saying my book, but works by Bertrand Russell or Oscar Wilde, people who weren't losers but who didn't believe in the work ethic, and argued this thing about guilt or wrote philosophy about idleness.

Tom Hodgkinson

#60. Damn it all, MacMurrough, are you telling me you are an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort?'
'If you mean am I Irish, the answer is yes.

Jamie O'Neill

#61. The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. - Oscar Wilde

Tonya Hurley

#62. As Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) pointed out, twilight 'is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets.' Then again, maybe poetry's chief use is to inspire us to watch the sun go down.

Jessica Kerwin Jenkins

#63. Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless ... - Oscar Wilde

J.J. McAvoy

#64. [Referring to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde] ... Will civilization never reach humane ideals? Will men always punish most severely the sins they do not understand and which hold forth for them no temptation? Did Jesus suffer in vain?

Frank Harris

#65. All art is quite useless. OSCAR WILDE

Oscar Wilde

#66. Oscar Wilde was suing the Marquis of Queensbury in 1895 for libel accusing Wilde of homosexuality
Counsel: Have you ever adored a young man madly?
Wilde: I have never given adoration to anyone except myself.

Oscar Wilde

#67. Who, being love, is poor? Oscar Wilde

Vikki Wakefield

#68. What a lurid life Oscar Wilde does lead - so full of extraordinary incidents. What a chance for the memoir writers of the next century

Max Beerbohm

#69. Actually, I do like pink clothes, but it's not because I'm girly, it's because I'm the reincarnation of Oscar Wilde.

Mara Wilson

#70. I went to drama school. I'm classically trained; I studied Shakespeare, blah blah blah. But I always preferred to do Oscar Wilde, or Shakespeare's comedies over his dramas.

Elizabeth Banks

#71. The truth is rarely pure and never simple. - Oscar Wilde

Greg Iles

#72. I am an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.

E. M. Forster

#73. Reported as Oscar Wilde's last words on his death bed ...
This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has to go.

Oscar Wilde

#74. Oscar Wilde said that "All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime," and then got sent off to Reading Gaol to reconsider and write ballads.

Mark Forsyth

#75. Looking at the poems of John Gray when I saw the tiniest rivulet of text meandering through the very largest meadow of margin, I suggested to Oscar Wilde that he should go a step further than these minor poets; he should publish a book all margin; full of beautiful, unwritten thoughts.

Ada Leverson

#76. So who's perfect? ... Washington had false teeth. Franklin was nearsighted. Mussolini had syphilis. Unpleasant things have been said about Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde. Tchaikovsky had his problems, too. And Lincoln was constipated.

John O'Hara

#77. No good deed goes unpunished - Oscar Wilde

Allen Mack

#78. I love physical comedy. I love Oscar Wilde, I love Shakespeare comedies, I love improv.

Elizabeth Banks

#79. There is no such thing as a heterosexual male, only men who haven't met Oscar Wilde yet.

Oscar Wilde

#80. Oscar Wilde: 'Do you mind if I smoke?' Sarah Bernhardt: 'I don't care if you burn.'

Sarah Bernhardt

#81. Everyone says Oscar Wilde was a dandy, but he wasn't - he was an aesthete. He took pleasure in food and stuff like that. Dandyism is much more austere - much more Calvinistic, more neurotic - it oscillates between narcissism and neurosis.

Sebastian Horsley

#82. When one is in love one begins by deceiving one's self. And one ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance." - Oscar Wilde

Ashton Cartwright

#83. I'm sure I've been influenced by every fine writer I've ever read, from Dickens and Austen to Auden and Jane Hirshfield. And also, the short stories of Updike, Cheever, Munro, Alice Adams, and Doris Lessing. And the plays of Oscar Wilde. And paintings by Alice Neel and Matisse.

Amy Bloom

#84. As happens with people who love a thing too much, it destroys them.
Oscar Wilde said, 'You destroy the thing that you love.' It's the other way around. What you love destroys you.

George Plimpton

#85. Hello, I am Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

#86. Who said it was thieves who know the price of everything and the value of nothing?"
"Oscar Wilde," I said. "And it's cynics, not thieves."
"Ah! That explains it, then.

Heidi Heilig

#87. 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, 1888

Erin Morgenstern

#88. Oscar Wilde said that conscience and cowardice are the same thing. What stops us from doing horrible things isn't our conscience but the fear of getting caught.

Louise Penny

#89. I try to keep in mind Oscar Wilde's comment that "saints always have a past and sinners always have a future," so no investment should be ruled out simply on the basis of past history. We focus on liquidation analysis and liquidation analysis alone.

Peter Cundill

#90. There is a homely directness about these rustic apothegms which makes them far more palatable than the strained and sophisticated epigrams of the characters of Oscar Wilde's plays, who are ever striving strenuously to dazzle us with verbal pyrotechnics.

Brander Matthews

#91. When in doubt, I read Oscar Wilde.

Camille Paglia

#92. You quoted Oscar Wilde." I smiled.
Hayden laughed. "Yeah, that was, like, the height of geekdom."
"No. It was kind of cool.

Jennifer L. Armentrout

#93. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. OSCAR WILDE, in a letter

Susan Sontag

#94. I used to hunt as a child but gave up the chase in my 'Ho Ho Ho Chi-Minh, we shall fight and we shall win' chanting and marching days - by which time I had come to share Oscar Wilde's feelings about 'the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.'

Jonathan Dimbleby