Wilde Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

An egg is always an adventure; it may be different each time — 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

Surely Love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the marketplace. It may not be purchased of the merchants, for can it be weighed out in the balance for gold. — Oscar Wilde

People assume actresses are afraid to get older; the truth is the roles get a whole lot more compelling once you're too old to play dumb. — Olivia Wilde

You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity. — 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

The post on her left was occupied by Mr. Erskine of Treadley, an old gentleman of considerable charm and culture, who had fallen, however, into bad habits of silence, having, as he explained once to Lady Agatha, said everything that he had to say before he was thirty. — Oscar Wilde

Lord Henry: to define is to limit. — Oscar Wilde

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. — Oscar Wilde

Gradually the events of the preceding night crept with silent, blood-stained feet into his brain and reconstructed themselves there with terrible distinctness. He winced at the memory of all that he had suffered, and for a moment the same curious feeling of loathing for Basil Hallward that had made him kill him as he sat in the chair came back to him, and he grew cold with passion. The dead man was still sitting there, too, and in the sunlight now. How horrible that was! Such hideous things were for the darkness, not for the day. — Oscar Wilde

Have some bread and butter. The bread
and butter is for Gwendolen. Gwendolen is devoted to bread and
butter. — Oscar Wilde

The vulgar directness of the question called for a direct answer. — Oscar Wilde

When I am in nature, my heart dances with butterflies and sings along with flowers. — Debasish Mridha

Pleasures may turn a heart to stone, riches may make it callous, but sorrows cannot break it. Hearts live by being wounded. — Oscar Wilde

Memory ... is the diary that we all carry about with us. — Oscar Wilde

If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want. — Oscar Wilde

I know a flower that grows in the valley, none knows it but I. It has purple leaves, and a star in its heart, and its juice is as white as milk. Should'st thou touch with this flower the hard lips of the Queen, she would follow thee all over the world. Out of the bed of the King she would rise, and over the whole world she would follow thee. And it has a price, pretty boy, it has a price. What d'ye lack? What d'ye lack? I can pound a toad in a mortar, and make broth of it, and stir the broth with a dead man's hand. Sprinkle it on thine enemy while he sleeps, and he will turn into a black viper, and his own mother will slay him. With a wheel I can draw the Moon from heaven, and in a crystal I can show thee Death. What d'ye lack? What d'ye lack? Tell me thy desire, and I will give it thee, and thou shalt pay me a price, pretty boy, thou shalt pay me a price. — Oscar Wilde

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

And you're not Juliet, dicking around with Romeo like she's got piss for brains and no respect for her house. You're loyal. To your dad, if not to the Titans. — Kati Wilde

How many others will come, Ivy? How many more will appear to kiss my wife goodbye?"
Crap-shit! No Midnight? She rolled her eyes. "No one else. I promise."
Carson turned his blue gaze on her, cold and menacing. "Do you have any idea how it felt to see his hands on you - innocent or not? I wanted to fucking kill him." He ran both his hands through his hair. "I still do. — Beth Mikell

The function of abundance is not to possess things but to use them and gather experiences. — Stuart Wilde

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

Flowers are as common in the country as people are in London. — Oscar Wilde

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

The greatest of all sins is stupidity. — Oscar Wilde

Never regret thy fall, O Icarus of the fearless flight For the greatest tragedy of them all Is never to feel the burning light. — Oscar Wilde

Lots of people act well, but very few people talk well, which shows that talking is
much the more difficult thing of the two, and much the finer thing also. — 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

Mothers, of course, are all right. They pay a chap's bills and don't bother him. But fathers bother a chap and never pay his bills. — Oscar Wilde

resist nothing but temptation — Oscar Wilde

There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other - by language, which is the parent, and not the child, of thought. — Oscar Wilde

An opinion is not necesarily correct just because you're willing to die for it. — Oscar Wilde

America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier in history than itself. — Oscar Wilde

She lives the poetry she cannot write — Larry Wilde

As happens with people who love a thing too much, it destroys them.
Oscar Wilde said, 'You destroy the thing that you love.' It's the other way around. What you love destroys you. — George Plimpton

Do you really keep a diary? I'd give anything to look at it. May I?
Oh, no. You see, it is simply a very young girl's record of her own thoughts and impressions, and consequently meant for publication. When it appears in volume form I hope you will order a copy. — Oscar Wilde

Extravagance is the luxury of the poor; penury is the luxury of the rich. — Oscar Wilde

The only form of fiction in which real characters do not seem out of place is history. In novels they are detestable. — Oscar Wilde

The real weakness of England lies, not in incomplete armaments or unfortified coasts, not in the poverty that creeps through sunless lanes, or the drunkenness that brawls in loathsome courts, but simply in the fact that her ideals are emotional and not intellectual. — Oscar Wilde

What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb.
American novels, answered Lord Henry. — Oscar Wilde

The sea, as Euripides says in one of his plays about Iphigenia, washes away the stains and wounds of the world. — Oscar Wilde

And, green or dry, a man must die — Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde once said that to live is the rarest thing in the world, because most people just exist, and that's all. I don't know if he's right, but I do know that I spend a long time existing, and now, I intend to live. — Robyn Schneider

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

There seemed to him to be something tragic in a friendship so colored by romance. — Oscar Wilde

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: ... But may I ask, at heart, are you an optimist or a pessimist? Those seem to be the only two fashionable religions left to us nowadays.
MRS CHEVELEY: Oh, I'm neither. Optimism begins in a broad grin, and Pessimism ends with blue spectacles. Besides, they are both of them merely poses.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: You prefer to be natural?
MRS CHEVELEY: Sometimes. But it is such a very difficult pose to keep up.
(Act I., lines 132-140) — 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

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

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

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

As for borrowing Mr. Whistler's ideas about art, the only thoroughly original ideas I have heard him express have had reference to his own superiority as a painter over painters greater than himself. — Oscar Wilde

What of Art?' she asked
'It is a malody.'
'Love?'
'Illusion'
'Religion?'
'A fashionable substitute for belief.'
'What are you?'
'To define is to limit — Oscar Wilde

I must say to myself that I ruined myself, and that nobody great or small can be ruined except by his own hand. I am quite ready to say so ... Terrible as was what the world did to me, what I did to myself was far more terrible still. — Oscar Wilde

When you're a working actor and you're happy to be one, you can't focus all your energy on acting because you will go crazy. You have to focus as much energy as you can away from yourself. — Olivia Wilde

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

The face of the enemy frightens me only when I see how much it resembles me — Oscar Wilde

Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones. — Oscar Wilde

fantastic shadows of birds — Oscar Wilde

He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of his then just conscious boyhood. — Oscar Wilde

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

My dear boy," said Lord Henry, smiling, "anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there. That is the reason why people who live out of town are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not, by any means, an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which men can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. Country people have no opportunity of being either, so they stagnate. — Oscar Wilde

The best revenge is to live well. — 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

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

Describe us as a sex," was her challenge.
"Sphinxes without secrets. — 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

Be simple; it is beautiful. Never forget to be kind; it is essential. — Debasish Mridha

Love is not fashionable anymore; the poets have killed it. — Oscar Wilde

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it — Oscar Wilde

How English you are, Basil! If one puts
forward an idea to a real Englishman, - always a rash
thing to do, - he never dreams of considering whether the
idea is right or wrong. The only thing he considers of any
importance is whether one believes it one's self. Now, the
value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the
sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the
probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it
will not be colored by either his wants, his desires, or his
prejudices. However, I don't propose to discuss politics,
sociology, or metaphysics with you. I like persons better
than principles. Tell me more about Dorian Gray. How
often do you see him? — Oscar Wilde

cannot do it," he said, mechanically, as though words could alter things. — Oscar Wilde

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. — Oscar 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

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

They have been eating muffins. That looks like repentance — Oscar Wilde

That's too bad, because you're going to get me," I say hoarsely, and her struggles abruptly cease. "You're going to get these rough hands that need to touch you. These eyes that will never tire of looking at you. These arms that will hold you steady or lift you up whenever you need their strength. This head that's crazy about every little thing you do." My voice deepens. "And you're going to get this heart that's already falling in love with you. — Kati Wilde

- Oscar Wilde said that we always destroy the thing we love the most. And it is true. The simple possibility of achieving that which we desire causes the soul of the common man to be filled with guilt. He looks around, and sees many others who have not succeeded, and so he thinks he does not deserve it. He forgets everything he overcame, all he suffered, everything he had to renounce in order to come this far. I know many people who, when they are within reach of their Personal Legend, make a series of silly mistakes and do not attain their objective - when it was just one step away. — Paulo Coelho

In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years — Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde always makes me smile - with respect and admiration. His short stories prove that it is possible to be both sarcastic, even cynical, but deeply compassionate. Just seeing the cover of one of Wilde's books in a bookshop makes me smile. — Orhan Pamuk

What happens so often as an actor is that you retain the information about the scenes that you yourself shot and you obsess over certain scenes that you found the most challenging or interesting. The rest of the film kind of falls away in your memory or it fades a little bit. — Olivia Wilde

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

The Noblest form of Affection — 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

I fell in love with theater there, and after graduation I moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting. — Olivia Wilde

I would give my soul for that! — Oscar Wilde

In literature mere egotism is delightful. — Oscar Wilde

The very violence of a revolution may make the public grand and splendid for a moment. It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly to be regretted, for both their sakes. Behind the barricade there may be much that is noble and heroic. But what is there behind the leading-article but prejudice, stupidity, cant and twaddle? — Oscar Wilde

Only people who look dull ever get into the House of Commons, and only people who are dull ever succeed there. — Oscar Wilde

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. — Oscar Wilde

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

And let me touch those curving claws of yellow ivory; and grasp the tail that like a monstrous asp coils round your heavy velvet paws. — Oscar Wilde

I love you every day as if it is Valentine's day. — Debasish Mridha

I could see myself in a relationship with a girl; Olivia Wilde is so sexy she makes me want to strangle a mountain ox with my bare hands. She's mesmerizing. — Megan Fox

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

I've made my peace and I'm ready to face whatever comes next. You can send me on in the knowledge that we're closing in on you and that this may well be the last murderous act you commit. [Hannah Wilde] — Stephen Lloyd Jones

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