Best Oscar Wilde Quotes & Sayings

There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live, undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. — Oscar Wilde

In one dancing saloon I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across. Over the piano was printed a notice: 'Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.' — Oscar Wilde

The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. — Oscar Wilde

For romantic young people like he is, the world always looks best at a distance; and a prison where one's allowed to order one's own dinner is not at all bad. — Oscar Wilde

he loathed his own beauty, and flinging the mirror on the floor, crushed it into silver splinters beneath his heel. It was his beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth that he had prayed for. But for those two things, his life might have been free from stain. His beauty had been to him but a mask, his youth but a mockery. What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts. Why had he worn its livery? Youth had spoiled him. — Oscar Wilde

I have a simple taste, only the best. — Oscar Wilde

It is the stupid and the ugly who have the best of it in this world — Oscar Wilde

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 This should be determined by the general spirit of the play more than by any actual historical references which may occur in it. — Oscar Wilde

The best way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. — Oscar Wilde

Albeit nurtured in democracy,
And liking best that state republican
Where every man is Kinglike and no man
Is crowned above his fellows, yet I see,
Spite of this modern fret for Liberty,
Better the rule of One, whom all obey,
Than to let clamorous demagogues betray
Our freedom with the kiss of anarchy.
Wherefore I love them not whose hands profane
Plant the red flag upon the piled-up street
For no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reign
Arts, Culture, Reverence, Honor, all things fade,
Save Treason and the dagger of her trade,
Or Murder with his silent bloody fee. — Oscar Wilde

The secrets of art are best learned in secret, and that Beauty, like Wisdom, loves the lonely worshipper. — Oscar Wilde

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

The best way to enjoy your job is to imagine yourself without one. — Oscar Wilde

Forgiveness with kindness is the best revenge. — Debasish Mridha

I cannot choose one hundred best books because I have only written five — Oscar Wilde

The best work in literature is always done by those who do not depend upon it for their daily bread, and the highest form of literature, poetry, brings no wealth to the singer. For producing your best work also you will require some leisure and freedom from sordid care. — Oscar Wilde

I hope to-morrow will be a fine day, Lane.
It never is, sir.
Lane, you're a perfect pessimist.
I do my best to give satisfaction, sir. — Oscar Wilde

We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.'
'Even when one has been wounded by it, Harry?' asked the duchess after a pause.
'Especially when one has been wounded by it,' answered Lord Henry. — Oscar Wilde

Love is the best treatment for depression. To get better, you have to give it away as much as you can, as fast as you can, and as often as you can. — Debasish Mridha

Try your best, before any rest. Life gets its beauty from the best. — Debasish Mridha

To get into the best society, nowadays, one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people - that is all! — Oscar Wilde

The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal. — Oscar Wilde

Share your wisdom. It is the best way to help in the progress of life and humanity. — Debasish Mridha

Make each day, the best day of life. — Debasish Mridha

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best. — Oscar Wilde

It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done, — Oscar Wilde

The best teacher teaches by inspiring students to learn by showing them the ultimate purpose of learning. — Debasish Mridha

Oscar Wilde said that men marry because they are bored, and women because they are curious, and that both are disappointed ... He was right about the disappointment. You will be disappointed ... Not just in each other, but in yourselves. It's inevitable that you'll each fall short of your own expectations ... But you will also exceed those expectations, again and again, and in ways you can't possibly imagine. And my wish for you both is that there will come a time when you'll look back on this day and realize that - in spite of the disappointments - even the best of your old expectations seem pale in the face of the actual life you have lived together. — A. Manette Ansay

I am a man of simple pleasures. The best suits me perfectly. — Oscar Wilde

It is never too early and never too late to try your best. What you like or what you love will be a great success. — Debasish Mridha

Make nature your best teacher. With great love, learn from her the lessons of life. — Debasish Mridha

For not in quiet English fields
Are these, our brothers, lain to rest,
Where we might deck their broken shields
With all the flowers the dead love best. — Oscar Wilde

It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done. — Oscar Wilde

In the morning, smile like the morning sun and give the best gift of a smile filled with the warmth of love. — Debasish Mridha

A smile is the best makeup that can change your looks and your heart. — Debasish Mridha

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one. — Oscar Wilde

I want to be able to do anything with words: handle slashing, flaming descriptions like Wells, and use the paradox with the clarity of Samuel Butler, the breadth of Bernard Shaw and the wit of Oscar Wilde, I want to do the wide sultry heavens of Conrad, the rolled-gold sundowns and crazy-quilt skies of Hitchens and Kipling as well as the pastel dawns and twilights of Chesterton. All that is by way of example. As a matter of fact I am a professed literary thief, hot after the best methods of every writer in my generation. — F Scott Fitzgerald

The ugly and stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live
undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They never bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Henry; my brains, such as they are
my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks
we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly. — Oscar Wilde

Some of my best friends are Oscar Wilde. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The best way to make children good is to make them happy. — Oscar Wilde

Happiness is the best makeup to emphasize your inner beauty and outer glow. — Debasish Mridha

But surely it is something to have been
The best beloved for a little while,
To have walked hand in hand with Love, and seen
His purple wings flit once across thy smile. — 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

Vacations are the best time to find your true self deep inside. — Debasish Mridha

The best way of life, is the way of love. — Debasish Mridha

Really the answers I get are idiotic. The entire correspondence of you and Robbie with me should be published. The best title would be Letters from Two Idiots to a Lunatic, I should fancy. — Oscar Wilde

He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigraph on his tombstone. — Oscar Wilde

Reading the very best writers - let us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy - is not going to make us better citizens. Art is perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who was right about everything. He also told us that all bad poetry is sincere. Had I the power to do so, I would command that these words be engraved above every gate at every university, so that each student might ponder the splendor of the insight. — Harold Bloom

I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses anyone for asking any question - simple curiosity. — Oscar Wilde

I want to paint the rest of my days with the best colors. — Debasish Mridha

He who stands most remote from his age is he who mirrors it best. — Oscar Wilde

I'm a man of simple tastes. I'm always satisfied with the best. — Oscar Wilde

It is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. — Oscar Wilde

Education is the best weapon to fight against the adversity of life. — Debasish Mridha

The best way to appreciate your job is to, is here to stay. — Oscar Wilde

What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts. — Oscar Wilde

The best revenge is to live well. — Oscar Wilde

You are the writer of your life story; so don't forget to write the best one. — Debasish Mridha

I would sooner lose my best friend than my worst enemy. To have friends, you know, one need only be good-natured; but when a man has no enemy left there must be something mean about him. — Oscar Wilde

The best people to work for are me, myself and I. — Oscar Wilde