Oscar Wilde Quotes & Sayings

Fruitcake is like semen, there's a lot of it about but no one wants to swallow it — Oscar Wilde

Could we live it over again, Were it worth the pain, Could the passionate past that is fled Call back its dead! — Oscar Wilde

The unread is always better than the unreadable. — Oscar Wilde

The Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says. — Oscar Wilde

But what world says that [I'm wicked]? It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent terms. — Oscar Wilde

Either this wallpaper goes, or I do. — Oscar Wilde

I can sympathize with everything except suffering. I cannot sympathize with that. It is too ugly, too horrible, too distressing. — Oscar Wilde

The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilized being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company. — Oscar Wilde

I was very much disappointed in the Atlantic Ocean. — Oscar Wilde

I am jealous of everything whose beauty does not die. I am jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what I must lose? Every moment that passes takes something from me and gives something to it. Oh, if it were only the other way! If the picture could change, and I could be always what I am now! Why did you paint it? It will mock me some day - mock me horribly! — Oscar Wilde

They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist. — Oscar Wilde

I won't tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world's voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely - or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose! — Oscar Wilde

I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones. — Oscar Wilde

But neither milk-white rose nor red
May bloom in prison air;
The shard, the pebble, and the flint,
Are what they give us there:
For flowers have been known to heal
A common man's despair. — Oscar Wilde

The best one can say of modern creative art is that it is just a little less vulgar than reality. — Oscar Wilde

All good looks are a snare. They are a snare that every sensible man would like to be caught in. — Oscar Wilde

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. — Oscar Wilde

I love you, I love you, my heart is a rose which your love has brought to bloom, my life is a desert fanned by the delicious breeze of your breath, and whose cool spring are your eyes; the imprint of your little feet makes valleys of shade for me, the odour of your hair is like myrrh, and wherever you go you exhale the perfumes of the cassia tree.
Love me always, love me always. You have been the supreme, the perfect love of my life; there can be no other ... — Oscar Wilde

He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends. — Oscar Wilde

and life, seeing her own image, was still, and dared not to speak. — Oscar Wilde

From your silken hair to your delicate feet you are perfection to me. Pleasure hides love from us, but pain reveals it in its essence. — Oscar Wilde

I could deny myself the pleasure of talking, but not to others the pleasure of listening. — Oscar Wilde

Oh, no doubt the cod is a splendid swimmer - admirable for swimming purposes but not for eating. — Oscar Wilde

The Americans are certainly hero-worshipers, and always take their heroes from the criminal classes. — Oscar Wilde

Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight rope. — Oscar Wilde

And I will sing how sad Proserpina Unto a grave and gloomy Lord was wed, And lure the silver-breasted Helena Back from the lotus meadows of the dead, So shalt thou see that awful loveliness For which two mighty Hosts met fearfully in war's abyss! And — Oscar Wilde

It's not hard to get the ideas when they come. They just come ... it's painful waiting for them. — Oscar Wilde

had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself. I did not want any external influence in my life. You — Oscar Wilde

Thing we ask a servant for is a testimonial to honesty, sobriety and industry; for we soon find out that these are the scarce things, and that geniuses and clever people are as common as rats. — Oscar Wilde

For you I would throw over anybody, Duchess, said Lord Henry, with a bow. — Oscar Wilde

Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. — Oscar Wilde

Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?
Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn't know the market price of any single thing. — Oscar Wilde

Women are made to be loved, not to be understood. — Oscar Wilde

If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out. — Oscar Wilde

You came to me to learn the Pleasure of Life and the Pleasure of Art. Perhaps I am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful, the meaning of Sorrow and its beauty. — Oscar Wilde

It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously — Oscar Wilde

A true friend stabs you in the front, not the back. — Oscar Wilde

I have put my talent into writing, my genius I have saved for living. — Oscar Wilde

Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious. — Oscar Wilde

Jack: "Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me?"
Gwendolen: "I can. For I feel that you are sure to change. — Oscar Wilde

I dislike modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anything worth remembering. — Oscar Wilde

I love scrapes. They are the only things that are never serious."
"Oh, that's nonsense, Algy. You never talk anything but nonsense."
"Nobody ever does. — Oscar Wilde

If something cannot be done to check, or at least to modify, our monstrous worship of facts, art will become sterile and beauty will pass away from the land. — Oscar Wilde

Quite so," answered the young lord. "It is the problem of slavery, and we try to solve it by amusing the slaves. — Oscar Wilde

The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing. — Oscar Wilde

I am not in favour of this modern mania for turning bad people into good people at a moment's notice. — Oscar Wilde

Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation. The thin beaten-out leaf of tremulous gold that chronicles the direction of forces the eye cannot see is in comparison coarse. It is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in pain. — Oscar Wilde

The world is a stage, but the play is badly written. — Oscar Wilde

I have known everything," said Lord Henry, with a tired look in his eyes, "but I am always ready for a new emotion. — Oscar Wilde

She has form," he said to himself, as he walked away through the grove - "that cannot be denied to her; but has she got feeling? I am afraid not. In fact, she is like most artists; she is all style, without any sincerity. She would not sacrifice herself for others. She thinks merely of music, and everybody knows that arts are selfish. Still, it must be admitted that she has some beautiful notes in her voice. What a pity it is that they do not mean anything, or do any practical good. — Oscar Wilde

I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not. — Oscar Wilde

My wish isn't to mean
everything to everyone
but something to someone. — Oscar Wilde

For life is terribly deficient in form. Its catastrophes happen in the wrong way and to the wrong people. There is a grotesque horror about its comedies, and its tragedies seem to culminate in farce. — Oscar Wilde

Grass is hard and lumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects. — Oscar Wilde

True contentment is not having everything, but in being satisfied with everything you have. — Oscar Wilde

Immanuel isn't a pun; he Kant be! — Oscar Wilde

I wish I had, for as sure as there is a God in heaven, if he ever does you any wrong, I shall kill him. — Oscar Wilde

A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks. — Oscar Wilde

The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth. — Oscar Wilde

In judging of a beautiful statue, the aesthetic faculty is absolutely and completely gratified by the splendid curves of those marble lips that are dumb to our complaint, the noble modelling of those limbs that are powerless to help us. — Oscar Wilde

Nonsense!" growled the Wolf. "I tell you that it is all the fault of the Government, and if you don't believe me I shall eat you." The Wolf had a thoroughly practical mind, and was never at a loss for a good argument. — Oscar Wilde

The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out. — Oscar Wilde

Like silver moons the pale narcissi lay — Oscar Wilde

Missionaries are going to reform the world whether it wants to or not. — Oscar Wilde

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals. — Oscar Wilde

It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, sketch from him. Of course I have done all that. But he is much more to me than a model or a sitter. I won't tell you that I am dissatisfied with what I have done of him, or that his beauty is such that Art cannot express it. There is nothing that Art cannot express, and I know that the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best work of my life — Oscar Wilde

How ugly it all was! And how horribly real ugliness made things! He felt a little annoyed with Lord Henry for having — Oscar Wilde

You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. — Oscar Wilde

that. As long as I live, the personality of Dorian Gray will dominate me. You can't feel what I feel. You change — Oscar Wilde

Or that passion to act a part that sometimes makes us do things finer than we are ourselves? — Oscar Wilde

his passionate absorption in mere existence. Then, — Oscar Wilde

One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book. — Oscar Wilde

Life has everything in store for you, Dorian. There is nothing that you, with your extraordinary good looks, will not be able to do."
"But suppose, Harry, I became haggard, and old, and wrinkled? What then?"
"Ah, then," said Lord Henry, rising to go, "then, my dear Dorian, you would have to fight for your victories. As it is, they are brought to you. No, you must keep your good looks. We live in an age that reads too much to be wise, and that thinks too much to be beautiful. We cannot spare you." (8.19) — Oscar Wilde

We lose too soon, and only find delight
In withered husks of some dead memory. — Oscar Wilde

The world seemed to me fine because you were in it, and goodness more real because you lived. — 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

Youth! There is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in Life's lumber-room. But youth is the Lord of Life. Youth has a kingdom waiting for it. Every one is born a king, and most people die in exile. — Oscar Wilde

fantastic shadows of birds — Oscar Wilde

And Beauty is a form of Genius - is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. — Oscar Wilde

A poet can survive everything but a misprint. — Oscar Wilde

And your eyes, they were green and grey Like an April day, But lit into amethyst When I stooped and kissed; And your mouth, it would never smile For a long, long while, Then it rippled all over with laughter Five minutes after. You were always afraid of a shower, Just like a flower: I remember you started and ran When the rain began. I remember I never could catch you, For no one could match you, You had wonderful, luminous, fleet, Little wings to your feet. — Oscar Wilde

What a laugh she had!
just like a thrush singing. And how pretty she had been in her cotton dresses and her large hats! She knew nothing, but she had everything that he had lost. — Oscar Wilde

Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them. — Oscar Wilde

We live, I regret to say, in an age of Big Data hype. — Oscar Wilde

VICOMTE DE NANJAC. And you are younger and more C
beautiful than ever. How do you manage it?
MRS. CHEVELEY. By making it a rule only to talk to per- Y
fectly charming people like yourself. — Oscar Wilde

Art had no moral responsibility. Art, he argued, should strive only to be a beautiful object entirely separate from its creator. — Oscar Wilde

Twisted minds are as natural to some people as twisted bodies. — Oscar Wilde

That beauty which is meant by art is no mere accident of human life which people can take or leave, but a positive necessity of life if we are to live as nature meant us to, that is to say unless we are content to be less than men. — Oscar Wilde

She has the fascinating tyranny of youth, and the astonishing courage of innocence. — Oscar Wilde

The essence of thought, as the essence of life, is growth. — Oscar Wilde

They actually succeed in spelling his name right in the newspapers. That in itself is fame, on the continent. — Oscar Wilde

My dear fellow, it isn't easy to be anything nowadays. — Oscar Wilde

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. — Oscar Wilde

The method by which the fool arrives at his folly was as dear to him as the ultimate wisdom of the wise. — Oscar Wilde

Like the painting of a sorrow, A face without a heart. — Oscar Wilde

The is nothing that art cannot express — Oscar Wilde

A misanthrope I can understand - a womanthrope, never! — Oscar Wilde

Whatever music sounds like, I am glad to say it does not sound in the smallest degree like German. — Oscar Wilde

I am not at all cynical, I have merely got experience, which, however, is very much the same thing. — Oscar Wilde

No man should have a secret from his wife. She invariably finds it out. — Oscar Wilde