Quotes by Oscar Wilde

Perhaps one never seems so much at ones ease as when one has to play a part.

When good Americans die, they go to Paris.

But you don’t really mean to say that you couldn’t love me if my name wasn’t Ernest?GWENDOLEN: But your name is Ernest.JACK: Yes, I know it is. But supposing it was something else? Do you mean to say you couldn’t love me

Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.

If there is anything more annoying in the world than having people talk about you, it is certainly having no one talk about you.

To influence a person is to give him ones own soul.

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

It is only by not paying ones bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

Men always want to be a womans first love - women like to be a mans last romance.

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, its dead for you.

Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.

Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.

In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances, invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.