Top 1905 Quotes & Sayings by Oscar Wilde - Page 3

Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.

She is a peacock in everything but beauty.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

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

I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.

If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.

There is always something infinitely mean about other people's tragedies.

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.

Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating - people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

Charity creates a multitude of sins.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

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.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

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

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

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

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.

The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.

Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

If one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk.

In designing the scenery and costumes for any of Shakespeare's plays, the first thing the artist has to settle is the best date for the drama. This should be determined by the general spirit of the play more than by any actual historical references which may occur in it.

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

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

London is too full of fogs and serious people. Whether the fogs produce the serious people, or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don't know.

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.

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

In married life three is company and two none.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

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

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.

There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate - not to the artist, but to the public, blinding them to all but harming the artist not at all.

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 nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.

I have a dining room done in different shades of white, with white cushions embroidered in yellow silk: the effect is absolutely delightful and the room beautiful.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal considerations are no principle at all. For, to the poet, all times and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present preferable.

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.