Quotes
2,628 quote
It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But ... it is better to be good than to be ugly.
Oscar Wilde
•
The Picture of Dorian Gray
NOVEL
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
Oscar Wilde
•
The Picture of Dorian Gray
NOVEL
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
Oscar Wilde
•
The Picture of Dorian Gray
NOVEL
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Oscar Wilde
•
The Picture of Dorian Gray
NOVEL
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
Oscar Wilde
•
The Nightingale and the Rose
NOVEL
My dear fellow, the truth isn't quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl.
Oscar Wilde
•
The importance of Being Earnest
NOVEL
The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous.
Oscar Wilde
•
The importance of Being Earnest
NOVEL
I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.
Oscar Wilde
•
The importance of Being Earnest
NOVEL
To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune ... to lose both seems like carelessness.
Oscar Wilde
•
The importance of Being Earnest
NOVEL
Everything is dangerous, my dear fellow. If it wasn't so, life wouldn't be worth living.
Oscar Wilde
•
The importance of Being Earnest
NOVEL
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy.
Oscar Wilde
•
The Importance of Being Earnest
NOVEL
The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analysed, women ... merely adored.
Oscar Wilde
•
The Ideal Husband
NOVEL
I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.
Oscar Wilde
•
The Happy Prince and Other Stories
NOVEL
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Oscar Wilde
•
The Happy Prince
NOVEL
Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.
Oscar Wilde
•
The Decay of Lying
NOVEL
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
Oscar Wilde
•
The Decay of Lying
NOVEL
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
Oscar Wilde
•
The Decay of Lying
NOVEL
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
Oscar Wilde
•
The Critic as Artist
NOVEL
The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.
Oscar Wilde
•
The Critic as Artist
NOVEL
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
Oscar Wilde
•
The Critic as Artist
NOVEL