Quotes from Oscar Wilde

Thinking is the most unhealthy thing in the world, and people die of it just as they die of any other disease. Fortunately, in England at any rate, thought is not catching.

[T]hough of all poses a moral pose is the most offensive, still to have a pose at all is something.

Hatred is blind, as well as love.

Science is the record of dead religions.

History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

Prayer must never be answered: if it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes correspondence.

How strange a thing this is! The Priest telleth me that the Soul is worth all the gold in the world, and the merchants say that it is not worth a clipped piece of silver.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better.

A cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.

No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

An excellent man he has no enemies and none of his friends like him.

If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it.

The heart was made to be broken.

Women are never disarmed by compliments; men always are.

A subject that is beautiful in itself gives no suggestion to the artist. It lacks imperfection.

I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not.

The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance.

History is merely gossip.

When a voice behind me whispered low,"That fellow's got to swing."

About foxhunting: The unspeakable chasing the uneatable.

Action is the last refuge of those who cannot dream.

Action: the last resource of those who know not how to dream.

All that I desire to point out is the general principle that Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.