Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)

Irish playwright , poet , and author .

Table of contents

1 Sourced 1.1 The Picture of Dorian Gray 1.2 The Importance of Being Earnest 1.3 An Ideal Husband 2 Attributed 3 External links

Sourced

• As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
  • The Critic as Artist (1891)

• There is no sin except stupidity.
  • The Critic as Artist (1891)

• "Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes."
  • Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) Act 3, Scene 1. Dumby

• "What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
  • Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) Act 3,

• "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
  • Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) Act 3. Lord Darlington.

• "I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself."
  • Source: An Ideal Husband, Act 1, Scene 1. Lord Goring

• "I have said to you to speak the truth is a painful thing. To be forced to tell lies is much worse."
  • Source: De Profundis

• "A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it."
  • Source: De Profundis

• "In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer."
  • Source: Phrases and Philosophies for the use of the Young

• "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go."
  • Notes: Mr. Wilde said this in the Left Bank hotel in Paris where he passed away on November 30 1900, the wallpaper has since been removed and the room re-furnished in the style of one of Mr. Wilde's London flats. See also Famous last words.

• "Religions die when they are proven to be true. Science is the record of dead religions."
  • Source: Phrases and Philosophies for the use of the Young

• "To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance."
  • Source: An Ideal Husband

• "No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist."
  • Source: The Decay of Lying

• " High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people."
  • Source: The soul of man under Socialism

The Picture of Dorian Gray

• "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."

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

• "When I like people immensely I never tell their names to any one. It seems like surrendering a part of them."

• "The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it."

• "The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception necessary for both parties."

• "Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the colored canvas, reveals himself."

• "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."

• "Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them they will forgive us everything, even our intellects."

• "A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her."

• "A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on."

• "Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is the best ending for one"

• "Now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices."

• "Nowadays people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing."

• "Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed."

• "When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others."

• "He gives you good advice, I suppose. People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves."

• "Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name we gave to our mistakes."

• "To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable."

• "Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault."

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

• "The basis of optimism is sheer terror."

• "Genius outlasts beauty."

• "It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution."

• "You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit."

• "If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat."

• "The people who love only once in their lives are really the 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."

The Importance of Being Earnest

• "Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone." (Act 1)

• "The Only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her, if she is pretty, and to someone else, if she is plain." (Act 1)

• "To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness." (Act 1)

• "Mothers, of course, are all right. They pay a chaps bills and don't bother him. But fathers bother a chap and never pay his bills." (Act 1)

• "An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant as the case may be." (Act 1)

• "When a man does exactly what a woman expects him to do she doesn't think much of him. One should always do what a woman doesn't expect, just as one should say what she doesn't understand." (Act 3)

• "The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man. And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not?" (Act 3)

• "The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!" (Algernon, Act 1)

• "In married life, three is company, and two is none." (Algernon, Act 1)

• "It is absurd to have hard and fast rules about what one should and shouldn't read. More than half of modern culture depends upon what one shouldn't read." (Algernon, Act 1)

An Ideal Husband

• "Science can never grapple the irrational. That is why it has no future before it, in this world." (Mrs Cheveley, Act 1)

• "Sooner or later we have all to pay for what we do." (Mrs Chevely, Act 1)

• "Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious." (Lord Goring, Act 2)

• "All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon." (Sir Robert Chiltern, Act 2)

• "Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear." (Lord Goring, Act 3)

• "The only possible society is oneself." (Lord Goring, Act 3)

• "To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance." (Lord Goring, Act 3)

• "However, it is always nice to be expected, and not to arrive." (Lord Goring, Act 3)

• "Oh, why will parents always appear at the wrong time? Some extraordinary mistake in nature, I suppose." (Lord Goring, Act 3)

• "No women, plain or pretty, has any common sense at all, sir. Common sense is the privilege of our sex." (Lord Caversham, Act 3)

• "And we men are so self-sacrificing that we never use it, do we, father?" (Lord Goring answering to Lord Caversham, Act 3)

• "Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life." (Lord Goring, Act 4)

• "My dear father, when one pays a visit it is for the purpose of wasting other people's time, not one's own." (Lord Goring, Act 4)

• "My dear father, if we men married the women we deserved, we should have a very bad time of it." (Lord Goring, Act 4)

• "Now don't stir. I'll be back in five minutes. And don't fall into any temptations while I am away." (Miss Mabel Chiltern to Lord Goring, just after accepting his proposal)

Attributed

• A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her

• A true friend stabs you in the front

• Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

• All bad art is the result of good intentions.

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

• Buck up and be jolly, my dear lady! Stillbirth is a sign that God has a sense of humour!
  • Notes: It is claimed that Wilde said this upon visiting a London birthing ward and visiting with a distraught mother who had just birthed stillborn twins.

• Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

• Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative

• Democracy is the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.

• Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.

• Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

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

• I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.

• I am always astonishing myself. It is the only thing that makes life worth living.

• I am dying as I have lived: beyond my means.
  • Note: Oscar Wilde is supposed to have said this on his dying bed, while drinking a glass of champagne.

• I am not young enough to know everything.

• I don't recognize you - I've changed a lot.

• I have nothing to declare except my Genius.
  • Notes: This is one of Wilde's most famous sayings, which he is supposed to have said while passing through a customs checkpoint in New York. However, there is no contemporary evidence that such words were ever uttered, and the first record of them at all did not appear until many years later. This is most likely apocryphal, but if Wilde didn't say it, he should have.

• I have but the simplest taste - I am always satisfied with the best

• Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

• It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

• My own business bores me to death. I prefer other people's.

• No gentleman ever has any money.

• No man is rich enough to buy back his own past.

• The growing influence of women is the one reassuring thing in our political life.

• The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

• The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

• The supreme vice is shallowness.

• The value of an idea has nothing to do with the sincerity of the person expressing it.

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

• To be popular one must be a mediocrity.

• The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

• The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.

• My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.

• Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

• Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.

• Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

• What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.

• Why was I born with such contemporaries?

• It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little. - De Profundis, 1905

• Life is too important to be taken seriously.

External links

Note: A great many misquotations are attributed to Mr. Wilde. Please carefully verify the provenance of any quotations you believe should be ascribed to him.