Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
Oscar Wilde Quotations
We found 220 matching quotations.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
Oscar Wilde: "I wish I had said that." Whistler: "You will, Oscar; you will.
Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.
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. All art is quite useless.
She is a peacock in everything but beauty.
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.
Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything and when they grow older, they know it.
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
The only possible form of exercise is to talk, not to walk.
The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing.
I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.
While one should always study the method of a great artist, one should never imitate his manner. The manner of an artist is essentially individual, the method of an artist is absolutely universal. The first is personality, which no one should copy; the second is perfection, which all should aim at.
Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.
The proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding.
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Life is too important to be taken seriously.
Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.
I delight in men over seventy. They always offer one the devotion of a lifetime.
Simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex.
Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered.
Nothing is so aggravating as calmness.
All art is quite useless.
It often happens that the real tragedies in life occur in such an inarticulate manner that they hurt one by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.
The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.
When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
Why was I born with such contemporaries?
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
Everyone who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief.
He has never written a single book, so you can imagine how much he knows.
We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
Live the wonderful life that is in you.
It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
Knowledge would be fatal, it is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things beautiful.
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally dislike.
Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.
The very essence of love is uncertainty.
Action is the last refuge of those who cannot dream.
Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.
I can resist anything but temptation.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
The English country gentleman galloping after a fox -- the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all.
Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only the shallow people who do not judge by appearances.
A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?
...my dear boy, no woman is a genius. They are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
Science is the record of dead religions.
Sin is the only real colour element left in modern life.
Philanthropy is the refuge of rich people who wish to annoy their fellow creatures.
I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.
Wisdom comes with winters.
Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.
Conscience and cowardice are really the same thing. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm.
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
The only excuse for creating something useless is that one admires it intensely.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.
Chastity is the greatest form of perversion.
I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.
Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
Democracy is the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.
The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.
The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.
People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately.
Only the shallow know themselves.
Genius is born--not paid.
I am not young enough to know everything.
The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.
Journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarist.
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
About foxhunting: The unspeakable chasing the uneatable.
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.
To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.
I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.
Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
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.
None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.
The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.
Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.
People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.
We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.
How else but through a broken heart May Lord Christ enter in
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
A grand passion is the privelege of people who have nothing to do.
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
All that I desire to point out is the general principle that Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
I have nothing to declare but my genius.
Divorces are made in heaven.
I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities.
When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy.
Some cause happiness wherever they go others whenever they go.
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
Imagination is a quality given to man to compensate for what he is not, and a sense of humaor is provided to console him from what he is.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
The only thing one can do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
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.
The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture, and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.
It is an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said to be seen at San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.
I sometimes think that God, in creating man, overestimated His ability.
One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.
Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects.
The basis for optimism is sheer terror.
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
Missionaries are going to reform the world whether it wants to or not.
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
The problem with the common person is that he is so unbearably common!
I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible.
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement.
There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.
Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.
It is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be good than to be ugly.
... Nature, whose sweet rains fall of just and unjust alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undetected. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
One's real life is often the life that one does not lead.
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
There is no sin except stupidity.
Philosophy teaches us to bear with equanimity the misfortunes of others.
Eduaction is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.
A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life.
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.
Biography lends to death a new terror.
There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
Find expression for a sorrow, and it will become dear to you. Find expression for a joy, and you will intensify its ectasy.
I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
No, Ernest, don't talk about action. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
The only charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception necessary for both parties.
The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated.
By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
Beauty is a form of genius--is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon.
Punctuality is the thief of time.
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.
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their own peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their own peril.
One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
When good Americans die they go to Paris.
It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices.
The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
But what is the difference between literature and journalism?
...Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all.
...Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all.
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
Being natural is simply a pose.
The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, women? merely adored.
When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.
The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling I have always cultivated.
Morality, like art, means a drawing a line someplace.
Experience...is simply the name we give our mistakes.
Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude.
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.
Sometimes it takes courage to give into temptation.
Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another.
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
Dreamers can find their way by moonlight and their only punishment is that they see the dawn before the rest of the world.
Philanthropic people lose all sense of Humanity, it is their distinguishing characteristic.
As long as war is regarded as wicked it will always have its fascinations. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.
It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.
Life imitates art more than art imitates life.
A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
Art is the most intense form of individualism that the world has known.
I have the simplest of tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement.
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
The English country gentleman galloping after a fox - the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
My wallpaper and i are fighting a duel to death. One or the other has to go.
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
True friends stab you in the front.
Like dear St. Francis of Assisi I am wedded to Poverty: but in my case the marriage is not a success.
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking other people to live as one wishes to live.
Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.