Top 1905 Quotes & Sayings by Oscar Wilde
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an Irish poet Oscar Wilde.
Last updated on September 16, 2024.
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.
Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.
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.
Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
I can resist everything except temptation.
Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us.
A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.
This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
Who, being loved, is poor?
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.
It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it... I can resist everything but temptation.
The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.
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.
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.
True friends stab you in the front.
To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.
No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
Women are made to be loved, not understood.
I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
Related Authors
Alexander Pope Quotes
English
Poet
Emily Dickinson Quotes
American
Poet
George Herbert Quotes
British
Poet
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Quotes
American
Poet
Homer Quotes
Greek
Poet
Horace Quotes
Roman
Poet
John Milton Quotes
English
Poet
Khalil Gibran Quotes
Lebanese
Poet
Lord Byron Quotes
British
Poet
Maya Angelou Quotes
American
Poet
Ovid Quotes
Roman
Poet
Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes
English
Poet
T. S. Eliot Quotes
American
Poet
Walt Whitman Quotes
American
Poet
William Butler Yeats Quotes
Irish
Poet