Quotes by Oscar Wilde

The ugly and stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live-- undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They never bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Henry; my brains, such as they are-- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Grays good looks-- we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.

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

The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.

The ages live in history through their anachronisms.

The Noblest form of Affection

The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it.

That is one of the great secrets of life Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are ones mistakes.

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

Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.

It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little. I discern great sanity in the Greek attitude. They never chattered about sunsets, or discussed whether the shadows on the grass were really mauve or not. But they saw that the sea was for the swimmer, and the sand for the feet of the runner. They loved the trees for the shadow that they cast, and the forest for its silence at noon.

Life has always poppies in her hands.

It is in the brain that the poppy is red, that the apple is odorous, that the skylark sings.

The evolution of man is slow. The injustice of men is great.

The note of the perfect personality is not rebellion, but peace.

A lily-girl, not made for this world’s pain.

Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed.

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.

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

You silly Arthur! If you knew anything about...anything, which you dont, you would know that I adore you. Everyone in London knows it except you. It is a public scandal the way I adore you. I have been going about for the last six months telling the whole of society that I adore you. I wonder you consent to have anything to say to me. I have no character left at all. At least, I feel so happy that I am quite sure I have no character left at all.

JACKThat is nonsense. If I marry a charming girl like Gwendolen, and she is the only girl I ever saw in my life that I would marry, I certainly wont want to know Bunbury.ALGERNONThen your wife will. You dont seem to realize, that in married life three is company and two is none.JACKThat, my dear young friend, is the theory that the corrupt French Drama has been propounding for the last fifty years.ALGERNONYes; and that the happy English home has proved in half the time.