Quotes from Oscar Wilde

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

I always pass on good advice. It's the only thing to do with it. It is never any use to oneself.

I won't tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world's voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely—or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose!

I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy.

People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately.

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

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.

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

Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.

You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.

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

I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.

Science is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon eternal truths. Art is out of the reach of morals, for her eyes are fixed upon things beautiful and immortal and ever-changing. To morals belong the lower and less intellectual spheres.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

Religion is a fashionable substitute for Belief.

In married life three is company and two none.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

The modern sympathy with invalids is morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to encourage in others.

Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.

He knew the precise psychological moment when to say nothing.

Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.

Now and then it is a joy to have one's table red with wine and roses.

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.