Quotes by Oscar Wilde

JACK.I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.ALGERNON.We have.JACK.I should extremely like to meet them. What do they talk about?ALGERNON.The fools? Oh! about the clever people, of course.JACK.What fools!

One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing.

By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch of the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not.

Journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarist.

For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it.

It is only about things that do not interest one, that one can give a really unbiassed opinion; and this is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always valueless.

Everything is going to be fine in the end. If its not fine its not the end.

I love to talk about nothing. Its the only thing I know anything about.

There is a great deal to be said in favour of reading a novel backwards. The last page is as a rule the most interesting, and when one begins with the catastrophe or the dénouement one feels on pleasant terms of equality with the author. It is like going behind the scenes of a theatre. One is no longer taken in, and the hair-breadth escapes of the hero and the wild agonies of the heroine leave one absolutely unmoved. One knows the jealously guarded secret, and one can afford to smile at the quite unnecessary anxiety that the puppets of fiction always consider it their duty to display.

I dont like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.

in every pleasure, cruelty has its place...

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

The play was a great success but the audience was a disaster.

Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.

The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything.

(A country where) the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.

When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.

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