Oscar Wilde Quotes

Oscar Wilde

A selection of Oscar Wilde Quotes and quotations.

Oscar Wilde was a 19th century Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and author of short stories. He was famous for his barbed wit and was a great celebrity in his day.

Learn more about Oscar Wilde at Wikipedia.

  1. A woman with no past has no future.
  2. All art is immoral.
  3. All art is quite useless. - The Picture of Dorian Gray, Preface
  4. But what is the difference between literature and journalism? Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all. - The Critic as Artist
  5. Crying is the refuge of plain women and the ruin of pretty ones.
  6. Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the colored canvas, reveals himself. - The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 1
  7. Hatred is blind, as well as love.
  8. I don't play accurately, any one can play accurately, but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life. - The Importance of Being Earnest, Algernon
  9. I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.
  10. Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.
  11. Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.
  12. Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They're the only things we can pay. - Lady Windermere's Fan, Lord Darlington, Act I
  13. One should never make one's debut with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest to one's old age.
  14. Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast. - An Ideal Husband, 1893, Act I
  15. Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die. - The Importance of Being Earnest, Algernon, Act I
  16. The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. - The Picture of Dorian Gray, Preface
  17. The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. - The Picture of Dorian Gray, Preface
  18. The problem with socialism is that it will take up too many evenings.
  19. The world was made for men and not for women.
  20. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty. - The Picture of Dorian Gray, Preface
  21. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. - Lady Windermere's Fan, Lord Darlington, Act III
  22. When a man says he has exhausted life one always knows life has exhausted him.
  23. 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. - The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 4
  24. When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers. - An Ideal husband
  25. Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects. - The Picture of Dorian Gray, Ch. 15

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