Quotes by Wilde, Oscar

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

Wilde, Oscar on principles
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"We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments."

Wilde, Oscar on prison   

"I know not whether Laws be right or whether Laws be wrong; all that we know who live in gaol is that the wall is strong; and that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long."

Wilde, Oscar on prison   

"There is something tragic about the enormous number of young men there are in England at the present moment who start life with perfect profiles, and end by adopting some useful profession."

Wilde, Oscar on professions and professionals   

"Only mediocrities progress. An artist revolves in a cycle of masterpieces, the first of which is no less perfect than the last."

Wilde, Oscar on progress   

"If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable. In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it."

Wilde, Oscar on property   

"What between the duties expected of one during one's lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one's death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up. That's all that can be said about land."

Wilde, Oscar on property   

"The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature."

Wilde, Oscar on psychoanalysis   

"Yes; the public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."

Wilde, Oscar on public   

"The English public, as a mass, takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral."

Wilde, Oscar on public   

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"Public Opinion... an attempt to organize the ignorance of the community, and to elevate it to the dignity of physical force."

Wilde, Oscar on public opinion   

"No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide. I can quite understand how any ordinary critic would be strongly prejudiced against a work that was accompanied by a premature and unnecessary panegyric from the publisher. A publisher is simply a useful middle-man. It is not for him to anticipate the verdict of criticism."

Wilde, Oscar on publishing and publishers   

"He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time."

Wilde, Oscar on punctuality   

"Punctuality is the thief of time. Wilde I never travel without my diary. One should always have Something sensational to read in the train."

Wilde, Oscar on punctuality   

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime."

Wilde, Oscar on punishment   

"The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin."

Wilde, Oscar on purity   

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

Wilde, Oscar on quotations
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"I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for."

Wilde, Oscar on reality   

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

Wilde, Oscar on reason   

"Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions."

Wilde, Oscar on religion   

"Yes, I am a thorough republican. No other form of government is so favorable to the growth of art."

Wilde, Oscar on republican   

"One can survive everything nowadays, except death, and live down anything except a good reputation."

Wilde, Oscar on reputation   

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"Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak. They a"

Wilde, Oscar on respectability   

"The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out."

Wilde, Oscar on respectability   

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"He rides in the row at ten o clock in the morning, goes to the Opera three times a week, changes his clothes at least five times a day, and dines out every night of the season. You don't call that leading an idle life, do you?"

Wilde, Oscar on riches   

"To love oneself is the beginning of a life long romance."

Wilde, Oscar on romance and romanticism
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"Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement."

Wilde, Oscar on romance and romanticism
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"He must have a truly romantic nature, for he weeps when there is nothing at all to weep about."

Wilde, Oscar on romance and romanticism   

"Men always want to be a woman's first love. Women have a more subtle instinct: What they like is to be a man's last romance."

Wilde, Oscar on romance and romanticism
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"Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman."

Wilde, Oscar on romance and romanticism
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"There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad."

Wilde, Oscar on royalty   

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"It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest."

Wilde, Oscar on saints   

"The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it."

Wilde, Oscar on sales   

"Scandal: gossip made tedious by morality."

Wilde, Oscar on scandal
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"One should never make one's debut with a scandal. One should reserve that to give an interest to one's old age."

Wilde, Oscar on scandal   

"Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality."

Wilde, Oscar on scandal   

"It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating."

Wilde, Oscar on security   

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"Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets."

Wilde, Oscar on self-expression   

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"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognizes infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it."

Wilde, Oscar on self-interest
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"Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul."

Wilde, Oscar on senses
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