Oscar Wilde

“English actors act quite well, but they act best between the lines.”

“He doesn’t act on the stage - he behaves.”

“I love acting.  It is so much more real than life.”

“I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.”

“The stage is not merely the meeting place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life.”

“The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.”

“While we look to the dramatist to give romance to realism, we ask of the actor to give realism to romance.”

“It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.”

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

“A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen.”

“He is old enough to know worse.”

“I am not young enough to know everything.”

“Men become old but they never become good.”

“No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age.  It looks so calculating.”

“One should never make one’s debut with a scandal; one should reserve that to give interest to one’s old age.”

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

“The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.”

“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.”

“Young men want to be faithful and are not; old men want to be faithless and cannot.”

“Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.”

“Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.”

“Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.”

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

“In America, the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.”

“Of course, America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.”

“Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered.  I myself would say that it had merely been detected.”

“The youth of America is their oldest tradition; it has been going on now for three hundred years.”

“We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.”

“When good Americans die they go to Paris.”

“Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everybody in good society holds exactly the same opinions.”

“Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.”

“A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between art and nature.”

“A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.”

“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.”

“All art is quite useless.”

“Art is the most intense form of individualism that the world has known.”

“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”

“It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art.”

“It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.”

“It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.”

“Life imitates art more than art imitates life.”

“Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.”

“No great artist ever sees things as they really are.  If he did, he would cease to be an artist.”

“One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.”

“Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”

“The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.”

“There are moments when art attains almost to the dignity of manual labour.”

“There are two ways of disliking art: one is to dislike it; the other, to like it rationally.”

“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.”

“What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.”

“When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.”

“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.”

“There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.”

“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.”

“Beauty is the wonder of wonders.  It is only the shallow people who do not judge by appearances.”

“No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.”

“She is a peacock in everything but beauty.”

“Few of our modern novelists dare to invent a single thing.  It is an open secret that they don’t know how to do it.”

“He has never written a single book, so you can imagine how much he knows.”

“Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.”

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”

“More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read.”

“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.”

“One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed.”

“She looks like the de luxe edition of a wicked French novel meant especially for the English market.”

“The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden, and it ends with Revelations.”

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”

“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily.  That is what fiction means.”

“The world reads too much to be wise and thinks too much to be beautiful.”

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.  Books are well written or badly written.”

“You should study the Peerage; it is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done.”

“My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people’s.”

“I beg your pardon, I didn’t recognize you - I’ve changed a lot.”

“Charity creates a multitude of sins.”

“All charming people are spoiled; it is the secret of their attraction.”

“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad.  People are either charming or tedious.”

“Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them.  Rarely if ever they forgive them.”

“The best way to make children is to make them happy.”

“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.”

“With an evening coat and a white tie, anybody, even a stockbroker, can gain a reputation for being civilized.”

“If the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?”

“The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable.”

“There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.”

“Conscience makes egotists of us all.”

“Conscience and cowardice are really the same thing.  Conscience is the trade-name of the firm.”

“Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!”

“If England treats her criminals the way she has treated me, she doesn’t deserve to have any.”

“Murder is always a mistake; one should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.”

“The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.”

“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.”

“You know what a woman’s curiosity is - almost as great as a man’s.”

“What is a cynic?  A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

“Alas, I am dying beyond my means.”

“Biography lends to death a new terror.”

“Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.”

“Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.”

“One can survive everything nowadays except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.”

“Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.”

“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.”

“Action is the last refuge of those who cannot dream.”

“Dreamers can find their way by moonlight and their only punishment is that they see the dawn before the rest of the world.”

“Duty is what one expects from others.”

“On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one’s mind; it becomes a pleasure.”

“The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible; what the second duty is, no one has yet discovered.”

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

“Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.”

“Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another.”

“We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.”

“A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.”

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”

“Bernard Shaw is an excellent man; he has not an enemy in the world, and none of his friends like him.”

“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.”

“If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society would be quite civilized.”

“The English country gentleman galloping after a fox - the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.”

“The English have a miraculous power of turning wine into water.”

“The English public takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral.”

“The only possible form of exercise is to talk, not to walk.”

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

“Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.”

“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”

“After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relatives.”

“Brothers?  Oh, I hate brothers.  My older brother just doesn’t know when to die, and my younger brothers seem to do nothing but.”

“Fathers should be neither seen nor heard.  That is the only proper basis for family life.”

“Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them; the old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.”

“Her capacity for family affection is extraordinary; when her third husband died, her hair turned quite gold from grief.”

“I can’t help detesting my relations.  I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.”

“I love hearing my relations abused.  It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all.”

“Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live nor the smallest instinct about when to die.”

“The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet’s dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality.”

“To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”

“A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life.”

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

“Fashion is that by which the fantastic becomes for a moment universal.”

“Fashion is what one wears oneself: what is unfashionable is what other people where.”

“Flowers are as common in the country as people are in London.”

“I want my food dead.  Not sick, not dying, dead.”

“Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner.  The butter would probably get on my cuffs.  One should always eat muffins quite calmly.  It is the only way to eat them.”

“Whenever cannibals are on the brink of starvation, Heaven in its infinite mercy sends them a nice plump missionary.”

“In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.”

“A true friend stabs you in the front.”

“Anyone can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success.”

“Between men and women there is no friendship possible.  There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.”

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

“Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship; and it is the best ending for one.”

“Caricature is the tribute that mediocrity pays to genius.”

“Genius is born, not paid.”

“I have nothing to declare except my genuis.”

“I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.”

“The public is wonderfully tolerant.  It forgives everything except genius.”

“A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.”

“I sometimes think that God, in creating man, overestimated His ability.”

“One half of the world does not believe in God, and the other half does not believe in me.”

“Those whom the gods love grow young.”