Quotes from Oscar Wilde

One should never listen. To listen is a sign of indifference to one's hearers.

Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.

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

When one has never heard a man's name in the course of one's life, it speaks volumes for him; he must be quite respectable.

Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.

If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.

The English novels are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. But one should not be too severe on them. They show a want of knowledge that must be the result of years of study.

Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob.

Frank Harris has been received in all the great houses - once.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

I am afraid that we are beginning to be over-educated; at least everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching -that is really what our enthusiasm for education has come to.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.

Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.

Is it thy will that I should wax and wane, Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey, And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day?

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.

Science is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon eternal truths. Art is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon things beautiful and immortal and ever-changing.

It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.

Science can never grapple with the irrational. That is why it has no future before it, in this world.

The Governor was strong upon The Regulation Act: The Doctor said that Death was but A scientific fact: And twice a day the Chaplain called, And left a little tract.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional.

A simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle.

Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.