Quotes by Oscar Wilde

Most people live for love and admiration. But it is by love and admiration that one should live. If any love is shown us we should recognize that we are quite unworthy of it. Nobody is worthy to be loved... or if that phrase is a bitter one to bear, let us say that everyone is worthy of love, except him who thinks he is. Love is a sacrament that should be taken kneeling..

The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.

Dear little Swallow,’ said the Prince, ‘you tell me of marvelous things, but more marvelous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery.

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

When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.

And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, You let me play once in your garden, to-day you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise.

The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.

But youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.

If I could get back my youth, Id do anything in the world except get up early, take exercise or be respectable.

Youth is the only thing worth having. When I find that I am growing old, I shall kill myself.

The only people to whose opinions I listen now with any respect are people much younger than myself. They seem in front of me. Life has revealed to them her latest wonder.

What was youth at best? A green, an unripe time, a time of shallow moods, and sickly thoughts.

Romance lives by repetition, and repetition converts an appetite into an art.

you have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you dont even stir my curiosity.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

Albeit nurtured in democracy, And liking best that state republican Where every man is Kinglike and no manIs crowned above his fellows, yet I see,Spite of this modern fret for Liberty, Better the rule of One, whom all obey, Than to let clamorous demagogues betrayOur freedom with the kiss of anarchy.Wherefore I love them not whose hands profane Plant the red flag upon the piled-up street For no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reignArts, Culture, Reverence, Honor, all things fade, Save Treason and the dagger of her trade, Or Murder with his silent bloody fee.

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

America has never quite forgiven Europe for having been discovered somewhat earlier in history than itself.