Quotes by Oscar Wilde

About Oscar Wilde:

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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 passi...

Oscar Wilde

Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. 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.

Oscar Wilde

Il en est toujours ainsi des natures subtiles et raffinées. Il faut que leurs passions ploient ou broient, qu'elles choisissent de tuer ou de mourir. Seules ont la vie longue les peines légères et les légères amours. Les amours et les peines pro...

Oscar Wilde

The one charm about the past is that it is the past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen. They always want a sixth act, and as soon as the interest of the play is entirely over, they propose to continue it. If they were allowed their own...

Oscar Wilde

Most people are boring and stupid.

Oscar Wilde

But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.

Oscar Wilde

Perhaps one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part.

Oscar Wilde

He lives the poetry that he cannot write; the others write the poetry that they dare not realize.

Oscar Wilde

His principles were out of date, but there was a good deal to be said for his prejudices.

Oscar Wilde

Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour.

Oscar Wilde

Man is many things, but he is not rational.

Oscar Wilde

It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us.

Oscar Wilde

Human life--that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of gl...

Oscar Wilde

I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.

Oscar Wilde

It is simply expression, as Henry says, that gives reality to things.

Oscar Wilde

Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight rope. When the verities become acrobats, we can judge them.

Oscar Wilde

Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.

Oscar Wilde

The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

Oscar Wilde

You like every one; that is to say, you are indifferent to every one.

Oscar Wilde

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

Oscar Wilde

She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our p...

Oscar Wilde

Author Bio

  • NameOscar Wilde
  • DescriptionIrish writer and poet
  • AliasesOscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
  • BornOctober 16, 1854
  • DiedNovember 30, 1900
  • CountryUnited Kingdom Of Great Britain And Ireland
  • ProfessionPoet; Playwright; Short Story Writer; Journalist; Children's Writer; Novelist
  • WorksThe Importance Of Being Earnest; The Picture Of Dorian Gray