Top 100 Wilde's Quotes
#1. 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
#2. Oscar Wilde's "beautiful untrue things" that save the imagination from falling into "careless habits of accuracy.
Harold Bloom
#3. It was extremely important to show that Wilde's sexuality was not just some intellectual idea. It was real, and it was about the human body. To just have mentioned it and not shown it would have been, I think, peculiar and wrong.
Stephen Fry
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. Wilde's permanent celebrity belongs to literature, and only his transient notoriety to police news.
George Bernard Shaw
#9. Reported as Oscar Wilde's last words on his death bed ...
This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has to go.
Oscar Wilde
#10. Were Wilde's panthers grateful or rebellious? Eventually, of course, one prefers a rebellious bedfellow. But it requires a degree of gratitude to get him into bed in the first place
Jamie O'Neill
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour.
Oscar Wilde
#15. The fatal errors of life are not due to man's being unreasonable: an unreasonable moment may be one's finest moment. They are due to man's being logical.
Oscar Wilde
#16. It's really adorable." "That sounds adorable.
Rory Wilde
#17. The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.
Oscar Wilde
#18. When I see a spade, I call it a spade. I'm glad to say I have never seen a spade. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use it. It's the only thing he's fit for.
Oscar Wilde
#19. We shall be notes in that great Symphony
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,
And all the live World's throbbing heart shall be
Once with our heart
Oscar Wilde
#20. The sense of his own beauty came on him like a revelation. He had never felt it before. Basil Hallward's compliments
Oscar Wilde
#21. There is only one real tragedy in a woman's life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future invariably her husband.
Oscar Wilde
#22. 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
#23. Not eating meat really keeps me trim ... meat, and what's usually served with it, is a big calorie packer.
Olivia Wilde
#24. You can spend your life competing in a world that talks too loud / You can lose your own direction getting lost among the crowd / Confusion - is it any wonder that the road ahead's not clear / Well you can try too hard to find it now I realise it's here
Kim Wilde
#26. The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition.
Oscar Wilde
#27. The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality.
Oscar Wilde
#28. The wind had blown the fog away, and the sky was like a monstrous peacock's tail, starred with myriads of golden eyes.
Oscar Wilde
#29. I love yoga and hiking - I think that's the perfect combo.
Olivia Wilde
#30. The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.
Oscar Wilde
#31. Travel improves the mind wonderfully, and does away with all one's prejudices.
Oscar Wilde
#32. To become the spectator of one's own life, as Harry says, is to escape the suffering of life. I
Oscar Wilde
#33. 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
#34. It's great to know you've earned your place and to know that you are right for the role because my biggest fear is being offered something and showing up on set and doing one day and everyone going, "Oh geez, oh no, this isn't, she isn't.." and feeling that way myself.
Olivia Wilde
#35. ...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
#36. I quite agree with Dr. Nordau's assertion that all men of genius are insane, but Dr. Nordau forgets that all sane people are idiots.
Oscar Wilde
#37. Mothers, of course, are all right. They pay a chap's bills and don't bother him. But fathers bother a chap and never pay his bills.
Oscar Wilde
#38. Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.
Oscar Wilde
#39. '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
#40. Whether it's Dorothy Parker or Oscar Wilde, they're brilliant with genius bon mots. Of course, I find them extraordinary.
Duncan Roy
#41. Plain women are always jealous of their husbands. Beautiful women never are. They are always so occupied with being jealous of other women's husbands.
Oscar Wilde
#42. I also discovered Pilates when I got pregnant, as people kept saying it's a great way to stay in shape, and now I can't get enough - it's amazing. It helps with aches and pain and, even for non-pregnant people, it's a great way of getting those lean muscles.
Olivia Wilde
#43. There's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about.
Oscar Wilde
#44. My life is about politics, a lot of about music, and a lot about things other than acting. I like traveling the world. But, what makes me want to stay in this business and keep doing this are movies when it's a true labor of love.
Olivia Wilde
#45. It is very vulgar to talk about one's own business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then only at dinner parties.
Oscar Wilde
#46. It seems like a dangerous concept to have someone who's just your drinking buddy. Someone you have nothing in common with, if you're sober, is probably not a good, healthy friendship.
Olivia Wilde
#47. It's beauty that captures your attention; personality that captures your heart..
Oscar Wilde
#48. What between the duties expected of one during one's lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one's death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up. That's all that can be said about land.
Oscar Wilde
#49. One should always be in love. That's the reason one should never marry.
Oscar Wilde
#50. The world you see is seen by you alone. What entices you and what repels you, what strengthens you and what weakens you, is part of a pattern that no one else shares. Therefore, as Mr. Wilde said, no two people can perceive the same "truth," because each person's perspective is different.
Marcus Buckingham
#51. Self pity is the worst possible emotion anyone can have. And the most destructive. It is, to slightly paraphrase what Wilde said about hatred, and I think actually hatred's a subset of self pity and not the other way around - 'It destroys everything around it, except itself.'
Stephen Fry
#52. One day we'll have a system that includes the rights of the people to make money and keep it, rather than a system where you can vote for the fox or the wolf, but there's no little box that endorses the chickens. Our time will come, you can be sure of that.
Stuart Wilde
#53. I don't mind being laughed at: that's something I really don't mind, and I think that's kept me sane. My ability to laugh at myself and allow others to laugh at me has been my saving grace.
Kim Wilde
#54. Every memory is precious. It is more precious when it is a memory of a baby's smile.
Debasish Mridha
#55. 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
#57. They retain their egotism, and add to it many other egos. They are forced to have more than one life. They become more highly organized, and to be highly organized is, I should fancy, the object of man's existence. Besides,
Oscar Wilde
#58. I love scrapes. They are the only things that are never serious."
"Oh, that's nonsense, Algy. You never talk anything but nonsense."
"Nobody ever does.
Oscar Wilde
#59. Ones own soul, and the passions of one's friends - those were the fascinating things in life.
Oscar Wilde
#60. After a good quality dinner one will be able to forgive anybody, still one's own relations.
Oscar Wilde
#61. As for borrowing Mr. Whistler's ideas about art, the only thoroughly original ideas I have heard him express have had reference to his own superiority as a painter over painters greater than himself.
Oscar Wilde
#62. 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
#63. Lord AUGUSTUS:(looking around) Time to educate yourself, I suppose.
DUMBY: No, time to forget all I have learned. That is much more important.
Oscar Wilde
#64. But neither milk-white rose nor red
May bloom in prison air;
The shard, the pebble, and the flint,
Are what they give us there:
For flowers have been known to heal
A common man's despair.
Oscar Wilde
#65. I find that forgiving one's enemies is a most curious morbid pleasure; perhaps I should check it.
Oscar Wilde
#66. Lady Bracknell. Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well.
Algernon. I'm feeling very well, Aunt Augusta.
Lady Bracknell. That's not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.
Oscar Wilde
#67. 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
#68. When you're young, whatever you do that makes you stand out is a frightening thing. You learn later that that's what you want to do, stand out.
Gabriella Wilde
#69. Du Bois sighed theatrically. "It's as if Oscar Wilde never died for our sins.
Gavin G. Smith
#70. The 19thc hatred of Realism is Caliban's enraged reaction to seeing his own face in the mirror. The 19thc rejection of Romanticism is Caliban's fury at not seeing his face reflected in the mirror.
Oscar Wilde
#71. It is not." "If it is not, what have I to do with it?" "You should have gone away when I asked you," he muttered. "I stayed when you asked me," was Lord Henry's answer.
Oscar Wilde
#72. For only blood can wipe out blood, And only tears can heal: And the crimson stain that was of Cain Became Christ's snow-white seal. VI.
Oscar Wilde
#73. Hello dead girl," Isola said, ever the hostess.
"Hello heartbeat girl," said the uninvited guest. "It's like a drum, it's so fucking loud. Turn it down, will you?
Fairytales For Wilde Girls
#74. Yet one had ancestors in literature as well as in one's own race, nearer perhaps in type and temperament, many of them, and certainly with an influence of which one was more absolutely conscious.
Oscar Wilde
#75. Who the hell calls at two in the morning?"
"Maybe it's Matt Wilde, confessing his love," Lindsay says.
"Very funny,
Lauren Oliver
#76. It's either the wallpaper or me. One of us has to go. [These were his dying words.]
Oscar Wilde
#77. I am very pleased you like my stories. They are studies in prose, put for Romance's sake into fanciful form: meant partly for children, and partly for those who have kept the childlike faculties of wonder and joy, and who find simplicity in a subtle strangeness.
Oscar Wilde
#78. All those who come in contact with his [Christ's] personality, even though they may neither bow to his altar or kneel before his priest, in some way find that the ugliness of their sin is taken away and the beauty of their sorrow is revealed to them.
Oscar Wilde
#79. To shut one's eyes to half of life that one may live securely is as though one blinded oneself that one might walk with more safety in a land of pit and precipice.
Oscar Wilde
#80. Ah! what a nuisance people's people are!
Oscar Wilde
#81. I dare say that if I knew him I should not be his friend at all. It is a very dangerous thing to know one's friends.
Oscar Wilde
#82. I admire women who can be feminists and fight for women's rights, who believe in our powers as individuals and yet not apologize for beauty.
Olivia Wilde
#83. To fill our lives with joy, the morning sun touches our hearts with the warmth of her kindness and the light of her love. Let us be like the sun touch someone's life with kindness every morning.
Debasish Mridha
#84. You're the only one who can decide what's best for you.
Stuart Wilde
#85. To lose one parent might be considered a misfortune, or a reason to deny God's existence at the least. To lose two looks like He may be up to something.
Johnny Rich
#86. I felt as though I was healing. Aiden's presence, his patience and his love had brought a depth to my life that I didn't think possible.
Lilly Wilde
#87. I think it's very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person.
Olivia Wilde
#88. Watch nature, because it is your greatest teacher. It moves and flows and moves on again. There is an incredible beauty out there in the mountains, in the forests, to teach you it's silence, it's beauty, it's humility. Stay aligned to that.
Stuart Wilde
#89. He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one's eyes, and does not look at him.
Oscar Wilde
#90. Dammit Sir, it's your duty to get married. You can't always be living for pleasure!
Oscar Wilde
#91. Suddenly a dog bayed in the wood, and the dancers stopped, and going up two by two, knelt down, and kissed the man's hands. As they did so, a little smile touched his proud lips, as a bird's wing touches the water and makes it laugh. But there was disdain in it.
Oscar Wilde
#92. There is a tiny yellow daffodil, The butterfly can see it from afar, Although one summer evening's dew could fill Its little cup twice over, ere the star Had called the lazy shepherd to his fold, And be no prodigal.
Oscar Wilde
#93. But she would have soon found out that you were absolutely indifferent to her. And when a woman finds that out about her husband, she either becomes dreadfully dowdy, or wears very smart bonnets that some other woman's husband has to pay for.
Oscar Wilde
#94. All trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are sentences of death.
Oscar Wilde
#95. To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.
Oscar Wilde
#96. And you're not Juliet, dicking around with Romeo like she's got piss for brains and no respect for her house. You're loyal. To your dad, if not to the Titans.
Kati Wilde
#97. I lost one illusion last night. I thought I had no heart. I find I have, and a heart doesn't suit me, Windermere. Somehow it doesn't go with modern dress. It makes one look old. And it spoils one's career at critical moments.
Oscar Wilde
#98. 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
#99. When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others.
Oscar Wilde
#100. A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
Oscar Wilde
