Quotes from Oscar Wilde

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.

When our eyes met, I felt that I was growing pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Literature always anticipates life. It doesn't copy it but moulds it to it's purpose.

And all at once, summer collapsed into fall.

It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.

My desire to live is as intense as ever, and though my heart is broken, hearts are made to be broken: that is why God sends sorrow into the world.

I cannot choose one hundred best books because I have only written five

Experience is a question of instinct about life.

It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way.

Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

How pale the Princess is! Never have I seen her so pale. She is like the shadow of a white rose in a mirror of silver.

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.

I'm too old to know everything

Many people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honor.

Circumstances should never alter principles!

Lady Bracknell. Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well. Algernon. I'm feeling very well, Aunt Augusta. Lady Bracknell. That's not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.

Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.

I know he likes me. Of course I flatter him dreadfully. I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said...Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of decoration to charm his vanity, an ornament for a summer's day.

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

Those who have much are often greedy; those who have little often share.

Bad artists always admire each others work.

If we're always guided by other people's thoughts, what's the point in having our own?