Oscar Wilde

Yes; the public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

— Oscar Wilde

The English public, as a mass, takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral.

— Oscar Wilde

Public Opinion... an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force.

— Oscar Wilde

No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide. I can quite understand how any ordinary critic would be strongly prejudiced against a work that was accompanied by a premature and unnecessary panegyric from the publisher. A publisher is simply a useful middle-man. It is not for him to anticipate the verdict of criticism.

— Oscar Wilde

He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.

— Oscar Wilde

Punctuality is the thief of time. I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

— Oscar Wilde

One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.

— Oscar Wilde

The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.

— Oscar Wilde

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

— Oscar Wilde

I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

— Oscar Wilde

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

— Oscar Wilde

Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions.

— Oscar Wilde

Yes, I am a thorough republican. No other form of government is so favorable to the growth of art.

— Oscar Wilde

One can survive everything nowadays, except death, and live down anything except a good reputation.

— Oscar Wilde

Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak. They a

— Oscar Wilde

The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.

— Oscar Wilde

He rides in the row at ten o clock in the morning, goes to the Opera three times a week, changes his clothes at least five times a day, and dines out every night of the season. You don't call that leading an idle life, do you?

— Oscar Wilde

To love oneself is the beginning of a life long romance.

— Oscar Wilde

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.

— Oscar Wilde

He must have a truly romantic nature, for he weeps when there is nothing at all to weep about.

— Oscar Wilde

Men always want to be a woman's first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about things. What we like is to be a man's last romance.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.

— Oscar Wilde

It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.

— Oscar Wilde

The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.

— Oscar Wilde

Scandal: gossip made tedious by morality.

— Oscar Wilde

One should never make one's debut with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest to one's old age.

— Oscar Wilde

Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognizes infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

A person who, because he has corns himself, always treads on other people's toes.

— Oscar Wilde

A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.

— Oscar Wilde

Life is too important to be taken seriously.

— Oscar Wilde

He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing.

— Oscar Wilde

The great things in life are what they seem to be. And for that reason, strange as it may sound to you, often are very difficult to interpret (understand). Great passion are for the great of souls. Great events can only be seen by people who are on a level with them. We think we can have our visions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing visions have to paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine.

— Oscar Wilde

I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

— Oscar Wilde

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

— Oscar Wilde

What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colorless. By its curiosity Sin increases the experience of the race. Through its intensified assertion of individualism it saves us from monotony of type. In its rejection of the current notions about morality, it is one with the higher ethics.

— Oscar Wilde

There is no sin except stupidity.

— Oscar Wilde

The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret.

— Oscar Wilde

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

— Oscar Wilde

Skepticism is the beginning of Faith.

— Oscar Wilde

I never saw a man who looked with such a wistful eye upon that little tent of blue which prisoners call the sky.

— Oscar Wilde

What is said of a man is nothing. The point is, who says it.

— Oscar Wilde

The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

— Oscar Wilde

A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?

— Oscar Wilde

To make men Socialists is nothing, but to make Socialism human is a great thing.

— Oscar Wilde

When one pays a visit it is for the purpose of wasting other people's time, not one's own.

— Oscar Wilde

Never speak disrespectfully of Society. Only people who can't get into it do that.

— Oscar Wilde

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

— Oscar Wilde

Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.

— Oscar Wilde

How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that the Soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver.

— Oscar Wilde

Lots of people act well, but few people talk well. This shows that talking is the more difficult of the two.

— Oscar Wilde

Talk to a woman as if you loved her, and to a man as if he bored you.

— Oscar Wilde

The State is to make what is useful. The individual is to make what is beautiful.

— Oscar Wilde

The greatest of all sins is stupidity.

— Oscar Wilde

The only thing that ever consoles man for the stupid things he does is the praise he always gives himself for doing them.

— Oscar Wilde

While one should always study the method of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely universal. The first is personality, which no one should copy; the second is perfection, which all should aim at.

— Oscar Wilde

Nothing succeeds like success.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

I can sympathize with everything, except suffering.

— Oscar Wilde

Nobody of any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of sunset. Sunsets are quite old fashioned. To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism of temperament. Upon the other hand they go on.

— Oscar Wilde

There is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.

— Oscar Wilde

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the color, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better.

— Oscar Wilde

Sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of sympathy in the world, sympathy with pain does not really diminish the amount of pain.

— Oscar Wilde

To have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact, talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you.

— Oscar Wilde

I like to do all the talking myself. It saves time, and prevents arguments.

— Oscar Wilde

Good taste is the excuse I have given for leading such a bad life.

— Oscar Wilde

Absolute catholicity of taste is not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art.

— Oscar Wilde

Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.

— Oscar Wilde

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

— Oscar Wilde

Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

— Oscar Wilde

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it. To the great poet, there is only one method of music -- his own. To the great painter, there is only one manner of painting -- that which he himself employs. The aesthetic critic, and the aesthetic critic alone, can appreciate all forms and all modes. It is to him that Art makes her appeal.

— Oscar Wilde

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act according with the dictates of reason.

— Oscar Wilde

I can resist everything except temptation.

— Oscar Wilde

Do you really think, Arthur, that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to.

— Oscar Wilde

Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.

— Oscar Wilde

The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.

— Oscar Wilde

Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching. Our splendid physique as a people is entirely due to our national stupidity.

— Oscar Wilde

Time is waste of money.

— Oscar Wilde

In this world there are two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst.

— Oscar Wilde

It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.

— Oscar Wilde

I was disappointed in Niagara -- most people must be disappointed in Niagara. Every American bride is taken there, and the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life.

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Oscar Wilde

All trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are sentences of death.

— Oscar Wilde

One should never trust a woman who tells her real age. If she tells that, she'll tell anything.

— Oscar Wilde

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

— Oscar Wilde

If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.

— Oscar Wilde

The truth is rarely pure, and never simple

— Oscar Wilde

The worst form of tyranny the world has ever known the tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.

— Oscar Wilde

The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.

— Oscar Wilde

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

— Oscar Wilde

Whatever harsh criticisms may be passed on the construction of her sentences, she at least possesses that one touch of vulgarity that makes the whole world kin.

— Oscar Wilde

Vulgarity is the conduct of other people, just as falsehoods are the truths of other people.

— Oscar Wilde

Vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people.

— Oscar Wilde

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have it's fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

— Oscar Wilde

She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.

— Oscar Wilde

Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. What this century worships is wealth. The God of this century is wealth. To succeed one must have wealth. At all costs one must have wealth.

— Oscar Wilde