Quotes from Oscar Wilde

To know the vintage and quality of a wine one need not drink the whole cask. It must be perfectly easy in half an hour to say whether a book is worth anything or worth nothing. Ten minutes are really sufficient, if one has the instinct for form. Who wants to wade through a dull volume? One tastes it, and that is quite enough – more than enough, I should imagine.

He atones for being occasionally somewhat overdressed by being always absolutely over-educated. He is a very modern type.

I treated Art as the supreme reality and life as a mere mode of fiction.

As for marriage, of course that would be silly, but there are other and more interesting bonds between men and women.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the colored canvas, reveals himself.

strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us.  Men can be analysed, women . . . merely adored.

It takes a thoroughly good woman to do a thoroughly stupid thing.

Es perfectamente monstruoso -dijo por fin- la costumbre que tiene la gente hoy día de hablar a espaldas de uno y decir de él cosas que son completa y absolutamente ciertas.

Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies

The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing.

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yeild to it.

The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.

My Salome is a mystic the sister of Salammbô a Saint Thérèse who worships the moon.

Yes Harry I believe that is true. I cannot help telling you things. You have a curious influence over me. If I ever did a crime I would come and confess it to you. You would understand me.

Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.

Women are wonderfully practical,' murmured Lord Henry, 'much more practical than we are. In situations of that kind we often forget to say anything about marriage, and they always remind us.

Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates. Art is always more abstract than we fancy. Form and colour tell us of form and colour--that is all. It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely than it ever reveals him.

There seemed to him to be something tragic in a friendship so coloured by romance.

Describe us as a sex, was her challenge. Sphinxes without secrets.

Do you know I am afraid that good people do a great deal of harm in this world. Certainly the greatest harm they do is that they make badness of such extraordinary importance. It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

The best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so.

Don't be led astray into the paths of virtue.

The separation of spirit from matter was a mystery and the union of spirit with matter was a mystery also.

the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.