Quotes by Oscar Wilde

Marriage is a matter for common sense.But women who have common sense are so curiously plain, father, arent they? Of course I only speak from heresay?No woman, plain or pretty, has any common sense at all, sir. Common sense is the privilege of our sex.

For his mourners will be outcast menAnd outcasts always mourn...

Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it.

She lives the poetry she cannot write.

Yet the roses are not less lovely for all that

Yet ruled he not long, so great had been his suffering, and so bitter the fire of his testing, for after the space of three years he died. And he who came after him ruled evilly.

When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.

Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.

For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses.

Niagara ... is the first disappointment in the married life of many Americans who spend their honeymoon there.

I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.

There are works which wait, and which one does not understand for a long time; the reason is that they bring answers to questions which have not yet been raised; for the question often arrives a terribly long time after the answer.

So the swallow flew over the great city, and saw the rich making merry in their beautiful houses, while the beggars were sitting at the gates. He flew into dark lanes, and saw the white faces of starving children looking out listlessly at the black streets...

Bosie has insisted on stopping here for sandwiches. He is quite like a narcissus -- so white and gold. I will come either Wednesday or Thursday night to your rooms. Send me a line. Bosie is so tired: he lies like a hyacinth on the sofa, and I worship him. (letter from Oscar Wilde, 1892 - quoted from Love in a dark time by Colm Toibin)

Alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, may produce all the effects of drunkenness.

I must confess that most modern mysticism seems to me to be simply a method of imparting useless knowledge in a form that no one can understand

Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given away. The ruby shall be redder than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as the great sea.

Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. It is a meaningless word, too.

After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.