Quotes from Oscar Wilde

I make a great difference between people. 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. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me. Is that very vain of me? I think it is rather vain.

Lean on principles, one day they'll end up giving way.

Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us.

Grass is hard and lumpy and damp, and full of dreadful black insects.

A dream of form in days of thought'--who is it who says that? I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me.

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.

Punctuality is the thief of time.

The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid

shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. the loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude

Pray do! I think that whenever one has anything unpleasant to say, one should always be quite candid.

My writing has gone to bits - like my character. I am simply a self-conscious nerve in pain.

Like all people who try to exhaust a subject, he exhausted his listeners.

The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul.

Well, I can't help going to see Sibyl play, even if it is only for an act. I get hungry for her presence; and when I think of the wonderful soul that is hidden away in that little ivory body, I am filled with awe. You can dine with me to-night, Dorian, can't you? He shook his head. To night she is Imogen, he answered, and tomorrow night she will be Juliet. When is she Sibyl Vane? Never. I congratulate you.

My doctor says I must not have any serious conversation after seven [o'clock]. It makes me talk in my sleep.

Well, she wore far too much rouge last night, and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of desperation in a woman.

Religion? The fashionable substitute for belief.

I must remember that a good friend is a new world.

The English country gentleman galloping after the fox – the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.

I don't care about the London season! It is too matrimonial. People are either hunting for husbands, or hiding from them.

Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither

She is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair.

One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them.

Poor? What does that matter? When poverty creeps in at the door, love flies in through the window.