Quotes by Wilde, Oscar

"With an evening coat and a white tie, anybody, even a stock broker, can gain a reputation for being civilized."

Wilde, Oscar on investments   

"Plain women are always jealous of their husbands. Beautiful women never are. They are always so occupied with being jealous of other women's husbands."

Wilde, Oscar on jealousy
6 fans of this quote   

"There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community. By carefully chronicling the current events of contemporary life, it shows us of what very little importance such events really are. By invariably discussing the unnecessary, it makes us understand what things are requisite for culture, and what are not."

Wilde, Oscar on journalism and journalists
3 fans of this quote   

"It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly to be regretted, for both their sakes."

Wilde, Oscar on journalism and journalists   

"Bad manners make a journalist."

Wilde, Oscar on journalism and journalists   

"A kiss may ruin a human life."

Wilde, Oscar on kisses and kissing
11 fans of this quote   

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"I am not young enough to know everything."

Wilde, Oscar on knowledge
16 fans of this quote   

"There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating --people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing."

Wilde, Oscar on knowledge
10 fans of this quote   

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"We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language."

Wilde, Oscar on language   

"The mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-?-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value."

Wilde, Oscar on learning   

"Cultivated leisure is the aim of man."

Wilde, Oscar on leisure   

"When liberty comes with hands dabbled in blood it is hard to shake hands with her."

Wilde, Oscar on liberty   

"The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilized being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company."

Wilde, Oscar on lies and lying
4 fans of this quote   

"As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognize the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as elsewhere, practice must precede perfection."

Wilde, Oscar on lies and lying   

"We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the brim -- objects press around us, filling the mind with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death."

Wilde, Oscar on life   

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

Wilde, Oscar on life
31 fans of this quote   

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"The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him."

Wilde, Oscar on life   

"Life! Life! Don't let us go to life for our fulfillment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic"

Wilde, Oscar on life   

"Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a mauvais quart d'heure made up of exquisite moments."

Wilde, Oscar on life   

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"The suspense is terrible, I hope it will last."

Wilde, Oscar on anxiety
7 fans of this quote   

"He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone."

Wilde, Oscar on aphorisms and epigrams   

"It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."

Wilde, Oscar on appearance
5 fans of this quote   

"Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing."

Wilde, Oscar on argument
5 fans of this quote   

"I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing."

Wilde, Oscar on argument   

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"You should study the Peerage, Gerald. It is the one book a young man about town should know thoroughly, and it is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done."

Wilde, Oscar on aristocracy   

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"Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature."

Wilde, Oscar on literature   

"The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read."

Wilde, Oscar on literature
3 fans of this quote   

"Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. The nineteenth century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac."

Wilde, Oscar on literature   

"Yet each man kills the thing he loves from all let this be heard some does it with a bitter look some with a flattering word the coward does it with a kiss the brave man with the sword."

Wilde, Oscar on love
3 fans of this quote   

"When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance."

Wilde, Oscar on love
17 fans of this quote   

"One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry."

Wilde, Oscar on love
10 fans of this quote   

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"Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead."

Wilde, Oscar on love
8 fans of this quote   

"When a man has once loved a woman, he will do anything for her, except continue to love her."

Wilde, Oscar on love
19 fans of this quote   

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"There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love."

Wilde, Oscar on love
11 fans of this quote   

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"There's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about."

Wilde, Oscar on love
4 fans of this quote   

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"If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life."

Wilde, Oscar on loyalty
20 fans of this quote   

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"When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs."

Wilde, Oscar on marriage
6 fans of this quote   

"Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin, but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building."

Wilde, Oscar on marriage
3 fans of this quote   

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"They flaunt their conjugal felicity in one's face, as if it were the most fascinating of sins."

Wilde, Oscar on marriage   

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"On the whole, the great success of marriage in the States is due partly to the fact that no American man is ever idle, and partly to the fact that no American wife is considered responsible for the quality of her husband's dinners."

Wilde, Oscar on marriage