Wilde Life Quotes & Sayings

And yet it seems to me to be the one thing I have been looking for all my life. — Oscar Wilde

Whenever life sucks, remember you're going to die someday. — Oscar Wilde

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life. — Oscar Wilde

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

I keep a diary in order to enter the wonderful secrets of my life. If I didn't write them down, I should not probably forget all about them. — Oscar Wilde

The secret seems to be the only way to become mysterious and wonderful modern life. The commonest thing gets a touch fascinating when done on the sly. — Oscar Wilde

Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer. — Oscar Wilde

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. — Oscar Wilde

A live unexamined isn't worth living. I will add, A life unlived isn't worth examining. — Oscar Wilde

It is a very poor consolation to be told that the man who has given one a bad dinner, or poor wine, is irreproachable in private life. Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrees. — Oscar Wilde

Sin is the only color- element left in modern life. — Oscar Wilde

He to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives. — Oscar Wilde

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, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend. Browning writes about that somewhere; but our own senses will imagine them for us. There are moments when the odour of lilas blanc passes suddenly across me, and I have to live the strangest month of my life over again. — Oscar Wilde

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. — Oscar Wilde

The costume of the nineteenth century is detestable. It is so sombre, so depressing. Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life. — Oscar Wilde

Life is terrible. It rules us, we do not rule it. — Oscar Wilde

The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling I have always cultivated. — Oscar Wilde

What is abnormal in Life stands in normal relations to Art. It is the only thing in Life that stands in normal relations to Art. — Oscar Wilde

Because now you are young and beautiful and the whole world loves you. But, some day, you will be old and wrinkled and no-one will give you a second glance. It is a sad fact, but when youth goes, beauty goes with it. If you want my advice, go out and live. Live each day to the full and enjoy all of life's pleasures. — Oscar Wilde

The proper school to learn art is not life but art — Oscar Wilde

Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry. — Oscar Wilde

Experience is a question of instinct about life. — Oscar Wilde

No theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself — Oscar Wilde

How strange! Life gets easier when we get better. — Debasish Mridha

When I was young I thought money was the most important thing in life, now that I'm old - I know it is! — Oscar Wilde

A smile is the flower that grows in the garden of the heart to beautify and attract the butterflies of life. — Debasish Mridha

What a lurid life Oscar Wilde does lead - so full of extraordinary incidents. What a chance for the memoir writers of the next century — Max Beerbohm

All trials are trials for one's life. — 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

To live a wonderful life, be curious and impregnate your thoughts with kindness, compassion, and pure love. — Debasish Mridha

Everyone comes to this world with one great purpose. That is to serve others. — Debasish Mridha

But Roosevelt was just as much a faker. He constructed his macho persona from the ground up. When he first entered public life at the age of twenty-three as a New York state assemblyman, he was a rich kid with soft hands, a squeaky voice, and clothes that were a little too fashionable for his own good. The newspapers gave him nicknames: "Jane-Dandy," "our own Oscar Wilde," and "Punkin-Lily." He went west to shake this reputation. Viewed from this angle, Roosevelt's entire life looks like one gigantic exercise in overcompensation. — Nathanael Johnson

One thing is fact. The events of your life are created by you, and those events come to you through your feelings. — Stuart Wilde

Love is fed by the imagination, by which we become wiser than we know, better than we feel, nobler than we are: by which we can see life as a whole, by which and by which alone we can understand others in their real and their ideal relation. Only what is fine, and finely conceived can feed love. But anything will feed hate. — Oscar Wilde

To get back one's youth one has merely to repeat one's follies. — Oscar Wilde

Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.'
'You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry.'
'Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one in the picture?'
'Before either.'
'I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry,' said the lad.
'Then you shall come; and you will come, too, Basil, won't you?'
'I can't, really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to do.'
'Well, then you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray.'
'I should like that awfully.'
The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. 'I shall stay with the real Dorian,' he said, sadly. — Oscar Wilde

Nothing should be out of the reach of hope. Life is a hope. — Oscar Wilde

I was a man who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age ... The gods had given me almost everything. I had genius, a distinguished name, high social position, brilliancy,intellectual daring; I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men and the colour of things: there was nothing I said or did that did not make people wonder ... I treated Art as the supreme reality, and life as mere mode of fiction: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram. — Oscar Wilde

Life is too short to be in a hurry. — Oscar Wilde

Today, there are no prescribed rules for mourning because it takes place outside the rest of American life, and awkward encounters like the one Mary Wilde had at the florist ' s are a natural result of that. And maybe special classifications like "complicated grief" can have the effect of safely categorizing away people to whom horrific things happen, reassuring everyone else that catastrophe is not part of the regular course of human life. Not here, in twenty-first - century America. — Kate Sweeney

The supreme object of life is to live. Few people live. It is true life only to realize one's own perfection, to make one's every dream a reality. — Oscar Wilde

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

Next, take a look at the quality of the people who surround you. Do these people back you emotionally, or not? If they don't back you, are they at least passive? If not, get rid of them. Sometimes it is hard to drop off your mates at the great bus stop of life. But remember, your energy will only rise in direct relationship to the number of things you are able to get rid of - not to the things you acquire. By getting rid of things, attitudes, encumbrances, and blocks of one kind or another, things fly. — Stuart Wilde

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life. — Oscar Wilde

You seem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing. When we meet - we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go down to the Duke's - we tell each other the most absurd stories with the most serious faces. — Oscar Wilde

Book knowledge is not enough. Experiential knowledge is essential for success in life. — Debasish Mridha

Algernon. The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility! Jack. That wouldn't be at all a bad thing. Algernon. Literary criticism is not your forte, my dear fellow. Don't try it. You should leave that to people who haven't been at a University. They do it so well in the daily papers. — Oscar Wilde

To elope is cowardly; it is running away from danger, and danger has
become so rare in modern life. — Oscar Wilde

My dear boy, the people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect
simply a confession of failures. Faithfulness! I must analyse it some day. The passion for property is in it. There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up. But I don't want to interrupt you. Go on with your story. — Oscar Wilde

The real currency of life is not money but love. Real success comes not from earning but from giving. — Debasish Mridha

If you are truly in love with this world and your life, then you will lose the sense of angst. — Debasish Mridha

Life is an incredible adventure into the mysterious unknown future. — Debasish Mridha

If you are not long, I will wait for you all my life. — Oscar Wilde

Being vegan is not always easy and accessible. But it's a way of life and makes me as a person feel really good and physically look better. — Olivia Wilde

Oh my Valentine! I want to wake up and enjoy every sunrise with you and vanish into your hand at the sunset of my life. — Debasish Mridha

The only one you need in your life is that person who shows you he needs you in his. — Oscar Wilde

Uniconsciousess is a consciousness and awareness that everything, everyone, every beauty, every life, and every thought arises from the same thing. We are one. We are different expressions of one. — Debasish Mridha

Perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for men. There would be more joy in life if we were to accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes. — Oscar Wilde

To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life. — Oscar Wilde

When I was young, we thought that Oscar Wilde was a great nobleman who had thrown his life away for love. Nothing could be less true. He slept with East Enders who were procured for him by Lord Alfred Douglas. He knew them only 'in Braille' - the curtains were never drawn back in the rooms in Oxford where he met those boys. It was the most sordid life you can imagine. And he was bleating about love and dragging the fair name of Mr. Plato into the trial - after a life like that? — Quentin Crisp

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. — Oscar Wilde

The more you appreciate the things of beauty all around you, the more beautiful things will fill your life. — Debasish Mridha

Life had suddenly become too hideous a burden for him to bear. The dreadful death of the unlucky beater, shot in the thicket like a wild — Oscar Wilde

I never change.
MRS. CHEVELEY: (elevating her eyebrows) Then life has taught you nothing?
LADY CHILTERN: It has taught me that a person who has once been guilty of a dishonest and dishonorable action may be guilty of it a second time, and should be shunned.
MRS. CHEVELEY: Whould that rule apply to everyone?
LADY CHILTERN: Yes, to everyone, without exception.
MRS. CHEVELEY: Then I am sorry for you, Gertrude, very sorry for you. — Oscar Wilde

Selfishness is not living your life as you wish to live it. Selfishness is wanting others to live their lives as you wish them to. — Oscar Wilde

The joy of life is in new creations, new adventures, and new feelings. — Debasish Mridha

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

One is sure to be disappointed if one tries to get romance out of modern life. — Oscar Wilde

Something of a load to carry, sir," gasped the little man when they reached the top landing. And he wiped his shiny forehead. "I am afraid it is rather heavy," murmured Dorian as he unlocked the door that opened into the room that was to keep for him the curious secret of his life and hide his soul from the eyes of men. — Oscar Wilde

My life is so full of surprises, nothing surprises me any more. — Kim Wilde

If we're always guided by other people's thoughts, what's the point in having our own? — Oscar Wilde

People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course, they are charitable. They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion - these are the two things that govern us. And yet - — Oscar Wilde

Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets. — Oscar Wilde

Kindness is the ability to love someone in such a way that she will remember your kindness for the rest of her life. — Debasish Mridha

The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him. — Oscar Wilde

We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality. — Oscar Wilde

I talk so trivially about life because I think that life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it. — Oscar Wilde

I have very high standards for every part of life - my work, my relationships, food, love. I can't just pretend. — Olivia Wilde

What are the unreal things, but the passions that once burned one like fire? What are the incredible things, but the things that one has faithfully believed? What are the improbable things? The things that one has done oneself. No, Ernest; life cheats us with shadows, like a puppet- master. We ask it for pleasure. It gives it to us, with bitterness and disappointment in its train. We come across some noble grief that we think will lend the purple dignity of tragedy to our days, but it passes away from us, and things less noble take its place, and on some grey windy dawn, or odorous eve of silence and of silver, we find ourselves looking with callous wonder, or dull heart of stone, at the tress of gold-flecked hair that we had once so wildly worshipped and so madly kissed. — Oscar Wilde

. . . try as we may we cannot get behind things to the reality. And the terrible reason may be that there is no reality in things apart from their appearances. — Oscar Wilde

In married life three is company and two none. — Oscar Wilde

To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution. — Oscar Wilde

A strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come between them ... His eyes darkened, and the crowded, flaring streets became blurred to his eyes. When the cab drew up at the theatre, it seemed to him that he had grown years older. — Oscar Wilde

As he looked back upon man moving through History, he was haunted by a feeling of loss. So much had been surrendered! and to such little purpose! ... Hedonism ... was to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is but itself a moment. — Oscar Wilde

My friend is not allowed to go out today. I sit by his side and read him passages from his own life. They fill him with surprise. Everyone should keep someone else's diary; I sometimes suspect you of keeping mine. — Oscar Wilde

Yes; poor Bunbury is a dreadful invalid.
Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shillyshallying with the question is absurd. — Oscar Wilde

I put all my talent into my works; I put my genius into my life — Oscar Wilde

I am sorry my life is so marred and maimed by extravagance. But I cannot live otherwise. I, at any rate, pay the penalty of suffering. — Oscar Wilde

The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden. It ends with Revelations. — Oscar Wilde

Be happy, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart's-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty. — Oscar Wilde

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. — Oscar Wilde

Always try to live in a wonderful world where the sun is always shining, flowers are always blooming, birds are always singing, and you are always busy with a joyful life. — Debasish Mridha

Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known — Oscar Wilde

If life is a business, then you are blessed with an abundance of capital which is your unconditional love. — Debasish Mridha

But this murder
was it to dog him all his life? Was he always to be burdened by his past? Was he really — Oscar Wilde

This is that CONSOLATION DES ARTS which is the key-note of Gautier's poetry, the secret of modern life foreshadowed - as indeed what in our century is not? - by Goethe. You remember what he said to the German people: 'Only have the courage,' he said, 'to give yourselves up to your impressions, allow yourselves to be delighted, moved, elevated, nay instructed, inspired for something great.' The courage to give yourselves up to your impressions: yes, that is the secret of the artistic life - for while art has been defined as an escape from the tyranny of the senses, it is an escape rather from the tyranny of the soul. But only to those who worship her above all things does she ever reveal her true treasure: else will she be as powerless to aid you as the mutilated Venus of the Louvre was before the romantic but sceptical nature of Heine. — Oscar Wilde

Life is the most magnificent dance floor of love. Dance with love to feel the joy of life. — Debasish Mridha

You taught me what reality really is. To-night, for the first time in my life, I saw through the hollowness, the sham, the silliness of the empty pageant in which I had always played. To-night, for the first time, I became conscious that the Romeo was hideous, and old, and painted, that the moonlight in the orchard was false, that the scenery was vulgar, and that the words I had to speak were unreal, were not my words, were not what I wanted to say. — Oscar Wilde

I blame myself without reserve for my weakness. It was merely weakness. One half-hour with Art was always more to me than a cycle with you. Nothing really at any period of my life was ever of the smallest importance to me compared with Art. But in the case of an artist, weakness is nothing less than a crime, when it is a weakness that paralyses the imagination. — Oscar Wilde

Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing. — Oscar Wilde