Oscar Wilde

It is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn’t. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read.
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
I don’t want to change anything in England except the weather.
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.
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china.
Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They’re the only things we can pay.
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Do you know I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world. Certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance.
The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. And the body is born young and grows old. That is life’s tragedy.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.
Women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders.
Women treat us just as Humanity treats its gods. They worship us, and are always bothering us to do something for them.
Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.
Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.
There is a fatality about all good resolutions. They are always made too late.
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Ah! Don’t say you agree with me. When people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy.
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious. Both are disappointed.
A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.
Bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.
In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
The only horrible thing in the world is ennui.
Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.
One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything.
I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do the day after.
No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.
The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.
Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.
The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
She wore far too much rouge last night, and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.
Conscience and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm.
The secret of life is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.
I like men who have a future, and women who have a past.
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
The one charm of the past is that it is the past.
It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one behind one’s back that are absolutely and entirely true.

last edited: 2026-08-25 13:32