Oscar Wilde > Quotes

“Some things are too important to be taken seriously.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play... I tell you, that it is on things like these that our lives depend. ”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“A flower blossoms for its own joy.”
― Oscar Wilde

“It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Man is many things, but he is not rational.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Hearts Live By Being Wounded”
― Oscar Wilde

“I love to talk about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about.”
― Oscar Wilde

“When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”
― Oscar Wilde

“In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Ah! The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, women...merely adored.”
― Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“One has a right to judge a man by the effect he has over his friends.”
― Oscar Wilde

“In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.”
― Oscar Wilde

“It takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it. And even more courage to see it in the one you love”
― Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“Misfortunes one can endure--they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's own faults--ah!--there is the sting of life.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I have no objection to anyone’s sex life as long as they don’t practice it in the street and frighten the horses.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.”
― Oscar Wilde

“It is perfectly monstrous,' he said, at last, 'the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.”
― Oscar Wilde

“A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.”
― Oscar Wilde

“You have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvelous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“It is the stupid and the ugly who have the best of it in this world”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“nothing that is worth knowing can be taught”
― Oscar Wilde