Oscar Wilde Quotes

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Oscar Wilde Quotes & Sayings


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Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
- Oscar Wilde


Genius is born--not paid.
- Oscar Wilde


A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
- Oscar Wilde


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


Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
- Oscar Wilde


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


Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
- Oscar Wilde


At twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets.
- Oscar Wilde


Biography lends to death a new terror.
- Oscar Wilde


Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
- Oscar Wilde


Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
- Oscar Wilde


I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.
- Oscar Wilde


I am not young enough to know everything.
- Oscar Wilde


I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.
- Oscar Wilde


Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
- Oscar Wilde


It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
- Oscar Wilde


It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is fatal.
- Oscar Wilde


I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
- Oscar Wilde


America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
- Oscar Wilde


America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
- Oscar Wilde


If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
- Oscar Wilde


Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde


Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.
- Oscar Wilde


don't play accurately-any one can play accurately- but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life.
- Oscar Wilde


Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
- Oscar Wilde


Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons.
- Oscar Wilde


Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
- Oscar Wilde


One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
- Oscar Wilde


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


Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
- Oscar Wilde


Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
- Oscar Wilde


Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.
- Oscar Wilde


The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
- Oscar Wilde


The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
- Oscar Wilde


There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
- Oscar Wilde


Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
- Oscar Wilde


Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
- Oscar Wilde


The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.
- Oscar Wilde


The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.
- Oscar Wilde


One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.
- Oscar Wilde


The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.
- Oscar Wilde


The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.
- Oscar Wilde


To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.
- Oscar Wilde


We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.
- Oscar Wilde


We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.
- Oscar Wilde


Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
- Oscar Wilde


Why was I born with such contemporaries?
- Oscar Wilde


Wisdom comes with winters.
- Oscar Wilde


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