Quotes from Oscar Wilde

What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination.

We Irish are too poetical to be poets; we are a nation of brilliant failures, but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks.

A new life! That was what he wanted. That was what he was waiting for. Surely he

Suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators

Society--civilized society, at least--is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating.

but I, once a lord of language, have no words in which to express my anguish and my shame...

My dear father, if we men married the women we deserved, we should have a very bad time of it.

I don't think there is a woman in the world who would not be a little flattered if one made love to her. It is that which makes women so irresistibly adorable.

Society--civilized society, at least--is never very ready to believe anything to the detriment of those who are both rich and fascinating. It feels instinctively that manners are of more importance than morals, and, in its opinion, the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef ... Even the cardinal virtues cannot atone for half-cold entrees...

Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obscure.

The harmony of soul and body - how much that is! We in our madness have separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an ideality that is void.

Out of my nature has come wild despair; an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to look at; terrible and impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish that wept aloud; misery that could find no voice; sorrow that was dumb. I have passed through every possible mood of suffering. Better than Wordsworth himself I know what Wordsworth meant when he said—'Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark And has the nature of infinity.

One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book.

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously.  If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't.  Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism. LADY

She is a peacock in everything but beauty.

Bronze-limbed and well-knit, like a statue wrought by a Grecian, he stood on the sand with his back to the moon, and out of the foam came white arms that beckoned to him, and out of the waves rose dim forms that did him homage. Before him lay his shadow, which was the body of his Soul, and behind him hung the moon in the honey-coloured air.

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.

It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. It is when we are wounded by our own hands that love should come to cure us—else what use is love at all?

Yo adoro los placeres sencillos. Son el último refugio de los hombres complicados.

The very essence of romance is uncertainty.  If ever I get married, I'll certainly try to forget the fact.

The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her latest wonder.

For nearly twenty minutes, neither of the men spoke. A fly buzzed noisily about the room, and the ticking of the clock was like the beat of a hammer.

One has a right to judge of a man by the effect he has over his friends.

I'm so clever, I don't understand half of the things I'm saying.