Popular Oscar Wilde's Quotes And Sayings

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?

To have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered.

The moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognizes infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it.

Nothing worth knowing can be taught.

Crying is for plain women. Pretty women go shopping.

The only thing I cannot resist is temptation.

Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

Sooner or later we have all to pay for what we do.

You can never be overdressed or overeducated.

Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.

The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?

Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.

Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.

An idea that isn't risky is hardly worth calling an idea.

Only the shallow know themselves.

To live in this world is a rare thing; most people just exist.

Would you be in any way offended if I said that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection?

People fashion their God after their own understanding. They make their God first and worship him afterwards.

I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.

If a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. but if a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly. If he shut the doors of the house of mourning against me, I would move back again and again and beg to be admitted so that I might share in what I was entitled to share. If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him, I should feel it as the most poignant humiliation.

When both a speaker and an audience are confused, the speech is profound.

I have a simple taste, only the best.

Life is too short to learn German

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately.

Every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character.

Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.

The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not its growth and development.

Any place that we love becomes our world.

The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence.

To be popular one must be a mediocrity.

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

History is a lie commonly agreed upon.

Live the wonderful life that is in you.

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

I have nothing to declare but my genius, and this four-kilo bag of cocaine.

Don't be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for you. This is merely the beginning.

Love will fly if held too lightly Love will die if held too tightly . . .

One's dreams must be big enough so as not to lose sight of them.

I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.

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

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.

Wisdom is to have dreams big enough not to lose sight when we pursue them.

Love is a misunderstanding between two fools.

No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.

The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously-and have somebody find out.

I don't at all like knowing what people say of me behind my back. It makes me far too conceited.

A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.

The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life.

I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself. Sometimes I am so clever I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

The only horrible thing in the world is ennui.

I walk the world in wonder.

Never buy anything simply because it is expensive.

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

Pleasure is the only thing one should live for, nothing ages like happiness.

Thinking is wonderful, but the experience is even more wonderful.

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.

Nothing is good in moderation. You cannot know good in anything until you have torn the heart out of it by excess.

Nowadays, saying what you really think can be a serious error since one risks being misunderstood.

A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.

A mask tells us more than a face.

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

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

I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do. If a personality fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that personality selects is absolutely delightful to me.

The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork.

There is no sin except stupidity.

When people talk to me about the weather, I always feel they mean something else.

Good intentions are invariably ungrammatical.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole!

When a love comes to an end, weaklings cry, efficient ones instantly find another love, and the wise already have one in reserve.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. We all have clouds above us but some see their silver linings. We all face difficulties but some of us are grateful that they aren't worse.

Without order nothing can exist-without chaos nothing can evolve. Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.

We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.

You can fake intelligence, but you can't fake wit.

The only thing that the artist cannot see is the obvious. The only thing that the public can see is the obvious.

One should always be a little improbable.

It is what we fear that happens to us.

They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about.

Some things are too important to be taken seriously.

A man who takes himself too seriously will find that no one else takes him seriously.

The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.

Good taste is the excuse I've always given for leading such a bad life