Quotes from Oscar Wilde

Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.

From the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul brain and power.

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

I am always late on principle, my principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.

In war, the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich makes slaves of the poor.

I love scrapes. They are the only things that are never serious. Oh, that's nonsense, Algy. You never talk anything but nonsense. Nobody ever does.

I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can't go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.

I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood. Don't degrade me into the position of giving you useful information. Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

I never take any notice to what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do.

Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.

True friends stab you in the front

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me? I think that it is rather vain.

I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar and often convincing.

She lives in the poetry she cannot write.

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

His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion.

Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.

Pray don't talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else. And that makes me quite nervous.

Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.

I am not laughing, Dorian; at least I am not laughing at you. But you should not say the greatest romance of your life. You should say the first romance of your life. You will always be loved, and you will always be in love with love. A grande passion is the privilege of people who have nothing to do. That is the one use of the idle classes of a country. Don't be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for you. This is merely the beginning.

The one charm about the past is that it is the past. But women never know when the curtain has fallen.

An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them.

Oh, don't cough, Ernest. When one is dictating one should speak fluently and not cough. Besides, I don't know how to spell a cough.

A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous, treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in pain. The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and the tyranny of an old and loveless man. Yes, it was an interesting background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect as it were. Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.