Quotes by Wilde, Oscar

"Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die."

Wilde, Oscar on family
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"I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves."

Wilde, Oscar on family
9 fans of this quote   

"And now, I am dying beyond my means. [Sipping champagne on his deathbed]"

Wilde, Oscar on famous last words
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"One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead."

Wilde, Oscar on fantasy
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"Woman's first duty in life is to her dressmaker. What the second duty is no one has yet discovered."

Wilde, Oscar on fashion   

"Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old fashioned quite suddenly."

Wilde, Oscar on fashion   

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"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."

Wilde, Oscar on fashion
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"Fashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment the universal."

Wilde, Oscar on fashion   

"The American father is never seen in London. He passes his life entirely in Wall Street and communicates with his family once a month by means of a telegram in cipher."

Wilde, Oscar on fathers   

"Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life."

Wilde, Oscar on fathers
5 fans of this quote   

"None of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves."

Wilde, Oscar on faults
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"One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed."

Wilde, Oscar on fiction   

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"The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means."

Wilde, Oscar on fiction
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"People who love only once in their lives are shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect -- simply a confession of failures."

Wilde, Oscar on fidelity
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"What a fuss people make about fidelity! Why, even in love it is purely a question for physiology. It has nothing to do with our own will. Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot: that is all one can say."

Wilde, Oscar on fidelity
6 fans of this quote   

"The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one's clean linen in public."

Wilde, Oscar on flirting
3 fans of this quote   

"Flowers are as common in the country as people are in London."

Wilde, Oscar on flowers   

"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast."

Wilde, Oscar on food and eating
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"Always forgive your enemies -- nothing annoys them so much."

Wilde, Oscar on forgiveness
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"An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship."

Wilde, Oscar on friends and friendship
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"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   

"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
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"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   

"One should always play fair when one has the winning cards."

Wilde, Oscar on gambling
7 fans of this quote   

"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   

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

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

Wilde, Oscar on genius
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"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."

Wilde, Oscar on genius
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"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
9 fans of this quote   

"No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating."

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

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"I delight in men over seventy. They always offer one the devotion of a lifetime."

Wilde, Oscar on age and aging   

"Ambition is the last refuge of failure."

Wilde, Oscar on ambition
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"America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up."

Wilde, Oscar on america
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"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."

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

Wilde, Oscar on america
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"There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America."

Wilde, Oscar on america   

"People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all."

Wilde, Oscar on anarchism
3 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book