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

Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. . .

Oscar Wilde

The proper basis for marriage is mutual misunderstanding. The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married. One should always be in love - that's the reason one should never marry.

Oscar Wilde

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

Oscar Wilde

Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and women are forced to perform parts for which they ha...

Oscar Wilde

How pale the Princess is! Never have I seen her so pale. She is like the shadow of a white rose in a mirror of silver.

Oscar Wilde

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.

Oscar Wilde

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

Oscar Wilde

The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to the same low level. After all, even in ...

Oscar Wilde

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect by creating, or at any rate bringing out, the spirit of revo...

Oscar Wilde

The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development.

Oscar Wilde

The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence.

Oscar Wilde

The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace.

Oscar Wilde

The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.

Oscar Wilde

Most personalities have been obliged to be rebels. Half their strength has been wasted in friction.

Oscar Wilde

There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is calle...

Oscar Wilde

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

Oscar Wilde

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is th...

Oscar Wilde

Up to the present man has hardly cultivated sympathy at all. He has merely sympathy with pain, and sympathy with pain is not the highest form of sympathy. All sympathy is fine, but sympathy with suffering is the least fine mode. It is tainted with eg...

Oscar Wilde

For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses.

Oscar Wilde

There was something terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence. No other activity was like it. To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all...

Oscar Wilde

It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never put one's worship into words.

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