You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.
It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.
Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
Yes: I am a dreamer. For 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.
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism. – Check out Optimism Quotes that contrast with this quote –
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.
Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.
Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.
A good friend will always stab you in the front.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
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.
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.
Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which require strength and courage to yield to.
Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.
I am not young enough to know everything.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive. – Check out more Funny Marriage Jokes –
Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
Memory is the diary that we all carry around with us.
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.
Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
The basis of optimism is sheer terror. – Check out Optimism Quotes that contrast with this quote –
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance.
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.
The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But… it is better to be good than to be ugly.
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.
It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.
The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.
Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.
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.
Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
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.
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.
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.
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
Continue reading these famous Oscar Wilde quotes about life
Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.
If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.
I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
Only the shallow know themselves.
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
I can resist everything except temptation.
No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.
The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.
There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.
Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. – Check out more Funny Marriage Jokes –
One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.
Pessimist: one who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.
The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.
I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.
Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.
A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.
America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.
What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.
Hatred is blind, as well as love.
A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.
Continue reading these famous Oscar Wilde love quotes
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.
Everything popular is wrong.
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
There is no sin except stupidity.
Biography lends to death a new terror.
Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
She is a peacock in everything but beauty.
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.
He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.
Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.
An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.
Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.
The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.
Woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends by blocking his retreat.
It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.
I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.
While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
There’s nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It’s a thing no married man knows anything about.
In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.
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.
I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.
Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.
If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.
I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating – people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.
There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.
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