Oscar Wilde Quotes
Oscar Wilde was an Irish writer and poet, considered to be one of the best writers of the late Victorian era. He is known for his epigrams, his plays and his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. It's widely accepted that he published his first work at age sixteen in 1856, a collection of poems titled Poems. During this time, he wrote a series of love letters concerning Lord Alfred Douglas and Fanny D'arles which he later destroyed.
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70 Quotes Found

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
Oscar Wilde

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
Oscar Wilde

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.
Oscar Wilde

You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.
Oscar Wilde

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.
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

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
Oscar Wilde

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
Oscar Wilde

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
Oscar Wilde

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Oscar Wilde

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.
Oscar Wilde

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
Oscar Wilde

Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety and strangeness. Good people exasperate one's reason; bad people stir one's imagination.
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

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Oscar Wilde

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
Oscar Wilde

The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
Oscar Wilde

There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.
Oscar Wilde

Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.
Oscar Wilde

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.
Oscar Wilde

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

I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.
Oscar Wilde

Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting.
Oscar Wilde

If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.
Oscar Wilde

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better.
Oscar Wilde

The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
Oscar Wilde

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Oscar Wilde

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
Oscar Wilde

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