Oscar Wilde > Quotes

“With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“To define is to limit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”
― Oscar Wilde (attributed to)

“I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I can resist anything except temptation.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”
― Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Who, being loved, is poor?”
― Oscar Wilde

“Crying is for plain women. Pretty women go shopping.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.”
― 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, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.”
― Oscar Wilde

“What of Art?
-It is a malady.
--Love?
-An Illusion.
--Religion?
-The fashionable substitute for Belief.
--You are a sceptic.
-Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith.
--What are you?
-To define is to limit.”
― Oscar Wilde , The Picture of Dorian Gray

“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Never marry at all, Dorian. Men marry because they are tired, women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I have nothing to declare except my genius.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.”
― Oscar Wilde

“A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”
― Oscar Wilde