Quotes By Oscar Wilde

If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.

The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.

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

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.

I have nothing to declare except my genuis.

I am not young enough to know everything.

Only the shallow know themselves.

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

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

Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

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.

I can resist everything except temptation.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.

Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.