"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."

Wilde, Oscar on genius
10 fans of this quote   

"Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one."

Wilde, Oscar on friends and friendship
19 fans of this quote   

"It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one, behind one's back, that are absolutely and entirely true."

Wilde, Oscar on gossip
9 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy."

Wilde, Oscar on happiness
11 fans of this quote   

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."

Wilde, Oscar on happiness
27 fans of this quote   

"How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?"

Wilde, Oscar on art
12 fans of this quote   

"To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture."

Wilde, Oscar on history and historians   

"Like two doomed ships that pass in storm we had crossed each other's way: but we made no sign, we said no word, we had no word to say."

Wilde, Oscar on hobos
4 fans of this quote   

"I'm sure I don't know half the people who come to my house. Indeed, from all I hear, I shouldn't like to."

Wilde, Oscar on hospitality
5 fans of this quote   

"Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt."

Wilde, Oscar on work
9 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result."

Wilde, Oscar on nature
8 fans of this quote   

"The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality."

Wilde, Oscar on humankind
4 fans of this quote   

"I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability."

Wilde, Oscar on humankind
14 fans of this quote   

"It is because Humanity has never known where it was going that it has been able to find its way."

Wilde, Oscar on humankind
8 fans of this quote   

"One knows so well the popular idea of health. The English country gentleman galloping after a fox -- the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable."

Wilde, Oscar on hunting   

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

Wilde, Oscar on gossip
14 fans of this quote   

"To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability."

Wilde, Oscar on goodness
9 fans of this quote   

"If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism."

Wilde, Oscar on goodness
15 fans of this quote   

"We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely."

Wilde, Oscar on function
5 fans of this quote   

"The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are."

Wilde, Oscar on the future
10 fans of this quote   

"In the old times men carried out their rights for themselves as they lived, but nowadays every baby seems born with a social manifesto in its mouth much bigger than itself."

Wilde, Oscar on human rights   

"The longer I live the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us."

Wilde, Oscar on generations
9 fans of this quote   

"Genius lasts longer than Beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves."

Wilde, Oscar on genius
6 fans of this quote   

"I have nothing to declare except my genius."

Wilde, Oscar on genius
7 fans of this quote   

"A true gentleman is one who is never unintentionally rude."

Wilde, Oscar on gentlemen
24 fans of this quote   

"Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years."

Wilde, Oscar on age and aging
6 fans of this quote   

"The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young."

Wilde, Oscar on age and aging
8 fans of this quote   

"Ambition is the last refuge of failure."

Wilde, Oscar on ambition
13 fans of this quote   

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."

Wilde, Oscar on america
10 fans of this quote   

"The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years."

Wilde, Oscar on america
4 fans of this quote   

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

Wilde, Oscar on goals
22 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"A new world is not made simply by trying to forget the old. A new world is made with a new spirit, with new values. Our world may have begun that way, but today it is caricature. Our world is a world of things. What we dread most, in the face of the impending debacle, is that we shall be obliged to give up our gewgaws, our gadgets, all the little comforts that have made us so uncomfortable. We are not peaceful souls; we are smug, timid, queasy and quaky."

Miller, Henry on world
32 fans of this quote