Oscar Wilde Quotes

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.

Always forgive your enemies nothing annoys them so much.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.

Man is many things, but he is not rational.

To become a work of art is the object of living.

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.

JACK: I will be back in a few moments, dear Canon. Gwendolen! Wait here for me!GWENDOLEN: If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

Spontaneity is a meticulously prepared art

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection.

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.

One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.

You can never be overdressed or overeducated.

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

What men call the shadow of the body is not the shadow of the body, but is the body of the soul.

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible not the invisible.

Christ did not die to save people, but to teach people how to save each other. This is, I have no doubt, a grave heresy, but it is also a fact.

I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

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

The English novels are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. But one should not be too severe on them. They show a want of knowledge that must be the result of years of study.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.

The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.

Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

It is very difficult sometimes to keep awake, especially at church, but there is no difficulty at all about sleeping.

Men know life too early women know life too late.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking other people to live as one wishes to live.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

All I want now is to look at life.

Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman

A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.

It is rarely in the world's history that its ideal has been one of joy and beauty. The worship of pain has far more often dominated the world.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

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

I am not young enough to know everything.

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool.

Did you hear what I was playing, Lane?I didn't think it polite to listen, sir.

If a woman cannot make her mistakes charming, she is only a female.

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

The Noblest form of Affection

I should fancy, however, that murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.