Quotes by Wilde, Oscar

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

Wilde, Oscar on goals
22 fans of this quote   

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"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   

"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   

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

Wilde, Oscar on gossip
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"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   

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"Frank Harris has been received in all the great houses -- once!"

Wilde, Oscar on guests   

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

Wilde, Oscar on happiness
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"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."

Wilde, Oscar on happiness
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"How else but through a broken heart may Lord Christ enter in?"

Wilde, Oscar on art
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"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   

"Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it."

Wilde, Oscar on history and historians
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"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   

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"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   

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

Wilde, Oscar on humankind
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"I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability."

Wilde, Oscar on humankind
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"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   

"They are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not."

Wilde, Oscar on husbands
3 fans of this quote   

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"The husbands of very beautiful women belong to the criminal classes."

Wilde, Oscar on husbands
7 fans of this quote   

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"The value of an idea has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it."

Wilde, Oscar on hypocrisy
3 fans of this quote   

"How clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say."

Wilde, Oscar on hypocrisy
23 fans of this quote   

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"And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats, none knew so well as I: for he who lives more lives than one more deaths than one must die."

Wilde, Oscar on hypocrisy
10 fans of this quote   

"A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing."

Wilde, Oscar on ideals and idealism
3 fans of this quote   

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"Ignorance is like a delicate fruit; touch it, and the bloom is gone."

Wilde, Oscar on ignorance
4 fans of this quote   

"The modern sympathy with invalids is morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others."

Wilde, Oscar on illness   

"The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action."

Wilde, Oscar on illusion
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"Imagination is a quality given a man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is."

Wilde, Oscar on imagination
13 fans of this quote   

"Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable."

Wilde, Oscar on impossibility
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"To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual."

Wilde, Oscar on action
8 fans of this quote   

"My great mistake, the fault for which I can't forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality."

Wilde, Oscar on individuality
9 fans of this quote   

"Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies."

Wilde, Oscar on infidelity
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"Private information is practically the source of every large modern fortune."

Wilde, Oscar on information   

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"Nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion."

Wilde, Oscar on innocence
4 fans of this quote   

"Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out."

Wilde, Oscar on intelligence and intellectuals   

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"The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all."

Wilde, Oscar on intelligence and intellectuals
5 fans of this quote   

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"Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are."

Wilde, Oscar on interviews
6 fans of this quote   

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"It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes."

Wilde, Oscar on invention and inventor
3 fans of this quote