Quotes from Oscar Wilde

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.

When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.

I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life.

We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.

Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.

Oscar Wilde was suing the Marquis of Queensbury in 1895 for libel accusing Wilde of homosexuality Counsel: Have you ever adored a young man madly? Wilde: I have never given adoration to anyone except myself.

They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever.

After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one's tears.

Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. Can you forgive me?

You seem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.

I like talking to a brick wall- it's the only thing in the world that never contradicts me!

The aim of life is self-development. To realise one's nature perfectly-that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

Never met such a Gorgon . . . I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair.

Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.

Yes, very sensible... People die of common sense, Dorian, one lost moment at a time. Life is a moment. There is no hereafter. So make it burn always with the hardest flame.

If there is anything more annoying in the world than having people talk about you, it is certainly having no one talk about you.

The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.

Well I won't argue about the matter. You always want to argue about things. That is exactly what things were originally made for.

Most people are boring and stupid.