Quotes by Oscar Wilde

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

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

We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.

It is very difficult sometimes to keep awake, especially at church, but there is no difficulty at all about sleeping.

It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never put ones worship into words.

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

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised. When it is violently, grossly, and cruelly used, it produces a good effect by creating, or at any rate bringing out, the spirit of revolt and individualism that is to kill it. When it is used with a certain amount of kindness, and accompanied by prizes and rewards, it is dreadfully demoralising. People, in that case, are less conscious of the horrible pressure that is being put on them, and so go through their lives in a sort of coarse comfort, like petted animals, without ever realising that they are probably thinking other peoples thoughts, living by other peoples standards, wearing practically what one may call other peoples second-hand clothes, and never being themselves for a single moment.

Besides, nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.

The past could always be annihilated. Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that. But the future was inevitable.

You dont love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.

I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.

I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience.

The burden of this world is too great for one man to bear, and the world’s sorrow too heavy for one heart to suffer.

Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things

A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public are to him non-existent

I can quite understand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and admit of its accumulation, as long as he himself is able under those conditions to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life. But it is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance.

You have a wonderful personality. Develop it. Be yourself. Dont imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you. If only you could realise that, you would not want to be rich. Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot. In the treasury-house of your soul, there are infinitely precious things, that may not be taken from you. And so, try to so shape your life that external things will not harm you.

Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices.

In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.

Pleasure is Natures test, her sign of approval.