Quotations by Oscar Wilde

Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we must see it on the tight rope. When the Verities become acrobats, we can judge them.

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray

I admit that I think that it is better to be beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand, no one is more ready than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly.

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray

Moderation is a fatal thing. Enough is as bad as a meal. More than enough is as good as a feast.

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray

Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray

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.

Oscar Wilde · The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.

Oscar Wilde · The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray

It is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.

Oscar Wilde · The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray

Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.

Oscar Wilde · The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray

Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude.

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray

Women have no appreciation of good looks; at least, good women have not.

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray

Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different.

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray

I never talk during music--at least, during good music. If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it in conversation.

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray

I should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich.

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.All art is quite useless.

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. Worlds had to be in travail, that the meanest flower might blow.

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray

Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. That is all.

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray

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

Oscar Wilde · The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People

Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray

Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love; it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

Oscar Wilde · The Picture of Dorian Gray