Quotes by Oscar Wilde

JACK: I will be back in a few moments, dear Canon. Gwendolen! Wait here for me!GWENDOLEN: If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

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

Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood

I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.

The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism – are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life – educated men who live in the East End – coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.

They get up early, because they have so much to do, and go to bed early, because they have so little to think about.

it is a marvel that those red-roseleaf lips of yours should be made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing.

Intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing.

I could deny it if I liked. I could deny anything if I liked.

A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me.

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool.

I cannot choose one hundred best books because I have only written five

The Number our envious Persons, confirmation our capability.

Lady Bracknell. Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well.Algernon. I’m feeling very well, Aunt Augusta.Lady Bracknell. That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together.

The 19thc hatred of Realism is Calibans enraged reaction to seeing his own face in the mirror. The 19thc rejection of Romanticism is Calibans fury at not seeing his face reflected in the mirror.

Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.

The world was my oyster but I used the wrong fork.

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyones feelings unintentionally.

Cheap editions of great books may be delightful, but cheap editions of great men are absolutely detestable

Deliver me from my disciples!