Quotes from Oscar Wilde

You can't possibly ask me to go without having some dinner. It's absurd. I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that.

The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated.

Salomé, Salomé, dance for me. I pray thee dance for me. I am sad to-night. Yes, I am passing sad to-night. When I came hither I slipped in blood, which is an evil omen; and I heard, I am sure I heard in the air a beating of wings, a beating of giant wings. I cannot tell what they mean .... I am sad to-night. Therefore dance for me. Dance for me, Salomé, I beseech you. If you dance for me you may ask of me what you will, and I will give it you, even unto the half of my kingdom.

I have always been of opinion that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.

One of the great secrets of life. Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense and discover too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.

High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

La única manera de librarse de la tentación es ceder ante ella. Si se resiste, el alma enferma, anhelando lo que ella misma se ha prohibido, deseando lo que sus leyes monstruosas han hecho monstruoso e ilegal

Time is a waste of money.

But what world says that [I'm wicked]? It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent terms.

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

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all

The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married.

Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams.

It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.

I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out.

I am afraid that woman appreciate cruelty, downright cruelty, more than anything else. They have wonderfully primitive instincts. We have emancipated them, but they remain slaves looking for their masters, all the same. They love being dominated.

Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.

The bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation

All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon.

There are moments, psychologists tell us, when the passion for sin, or what the world calls sin, so dominates a nature, that every fibre of the body, as every cell of the brain, seems to be instinct with fearful impulses. Men and women at such moments lose the freedom of their will. They move to their terrible end as automatons move. Choice is taken from them, and conscience is either killed, or, if it lives at all, lives but to give rebellion its fascination, and disobedience its charm.

Good heavens! how marriage ruins a man! It's as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.

Men know life too early. Women know life too late. That is the difference between men and women.

I am a born antinomian. I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws. But while I see that there is nothing wrong in what one does, I see that there is something wrong in what one becomes.