Oscar Wilde Quotes

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I especially like 3, 4, 10 and 20.

1. Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
2. All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
3. What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
4. A true friend stabs you in the front.
5. I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.
6. I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
7. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
8. Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
9. 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.
10. America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
11. I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
12. All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
13. Ah! Don’t say that you agree with me. When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.
14. Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
15. Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
16. I see when men love women, they give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.
17. There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said
about life’s sores the better.
18. Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
19. Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.
20. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
21. Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
22. There is no sin except stupidity.
23. The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.
24. The man who can dominate a London dinner-table can dominate the world.
25. One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
26. There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
27. One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
28. Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

 

[Mott the Hoople]

I'm rather partial to Twain;

When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.

I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.

What's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?

"Classic." A book which people praise and don't read.

In order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.

Do not put off till tomorrow what can be put off till day-after-tomorrow just as well.

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear -- not absence of fear.

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

Government is merely a servant – merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.

The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so.

The elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

Put all your eggs in one basket -- and watch that basket!

The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have someone to divide it with.

The lack of money is the root of all evil.

It is better to have old second-hand diamonds than none at all.

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.

There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children.

Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

The English do something because it has been done before. An American does something because it hasn't been done before.