Quotes from Oscar Wilde

Every prison that men build Is built with bricks of shame, And bound with bars lest Christ should see How men their brothers maim.

The General was essentially a man of peace, except in his domestic life.

What do you call a bad man? The sort of man who admires innocence.

Men are such cowards. They outrage every law in the world and are afraid of the world's tongue.

The world has been made by fools that wise men may live in it.

A publisher is simply a useful middle-man.

LADY BRACKNELL: Do you smoke? JACK: Well, yes, I must admit I smoke. LADY BRACKNELL: I'm glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind.

To have friends, you know, one need only be good-natured; but when a man has no enemy left there must be something mean about him.

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won't expect it back.

Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

No gentleman ever has any money.

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

When I was young I thought money was the most important thing in life. Now that I'm old - I know it is.

Lord Illingworth told me this morning that there was an orchid there as beautiful as the seven deadly sins.

Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night.

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.

Every woman becomes their mother. That's their tragedy. And no man becomes his. That's his tragedy.

Mothers, of course, are all right. They pay a chap's bills and don't bother him. But fathers bother a chap and never pay his bills.

It is absurd to say that there are neither ruins nor curiosities in America when they have their mothers and their manners.

Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.

Music is the art... which most completely realizes the artistic idea and is the condition to which all the other arts are constantly aspiring.

I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.