Quotes from Oscar Wilde

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

In England Ö education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and would probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.

Plain women are always jealous of their husbands. Beautiful women never are. They are always so occupied with being jealous of other women's husbands.

One can give a really unbiased opinion only about things that do not interest one

To get back to my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable

Experience is the name we give to our past mistakes

To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's life. It is no less than a denial of the soul

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.

Marriage is a romance in which the hero dies in the first chapter.

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

I do not approve of anything which tampers with natural ignorance.

Art is the most intense mode of invidualism that the world has known.

It is through… Art and Art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do

I can sympathize with everything, except suffering.

To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.

Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.

I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the LUXURY of a regret.

Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humour in the woman.

The difference between journalism and literature is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.