Quotes by Oscar Wilde
Ignorance is like a delicate fruit; touch it, and the bloom is gone.
When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old, I know it is.
Private information is practically the source of every large modern fortune.
The exquisite art of idleness, one of the most important things that any University can teach.
It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
Imagination is a quality given to man to compensate for what he is not, and a sense of humaor is provided to console him from what he is.
Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.
Missionaries are going to reform the world whether it wants to or not.
What is mind but motion in the intellectual sphere?
The Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says.
If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation.
In the world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way.
I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.
Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.
Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose
Lots of people act well, but few people talk well. This shows that talking is the more difficult of the two
Skepticism is the beginning of Faith.
Indeed, in many respects she was quite English and was an excellent example of the fact that we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, the language
There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one's fellows. 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. They live as we all should live, undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it, from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks- we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.
We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices.
There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America.
People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all.
Punctuality is the thief of time.
