Oscar Wilde
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.Collection: Love
No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.Collection: Love
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.Collection: Patriotism
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.Collection: Art
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.Collection: Art
Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.Collection: Men
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.Collection: Time
I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.Collection: Relationship
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.Collection: Truth
How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.Collection: Marriage
Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.Collection: Courage
If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.Collection: Beauty
Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.Collection: Success
Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.Collection: Experience
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.Collection: Women
If one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk.Collection: Music
Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.Collection: Forgiveness
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.Collection: Art
Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.Collection: Society
I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.Collection: Food
In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances, invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.Collection: Science
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.Collection: Work
To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.Collection: Intelligence
Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.Collection: Beauty
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.Collection: Sad
The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.Collection: Future
There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better.Collection: Beauty
Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.Collection: Experience
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.Collection: Good
This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.Collection: Hope
How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.Collection: Relationship
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.Collection: Women
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.Collection: Age
It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.Collection: Hope
It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.Collection: Art
You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.Collection: Courage
Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all, you must not strip it of vitality.Collection: Beauty
Women are made to be loved, not understood.Collection: Women
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.Collection: Good
It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.Collection: Art
There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.Collection: Marriage
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.Collection: Love
Yes, there is a terrible moral in 'Dorian Gray' - a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.Collection: Fear
No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.Collection: Age
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.Collection: Happiness
A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.Collection: Work
Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety and strangeness. Good people exasperate one's reason; bad people stir one's imagination.Collection: Imagination
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.Collection: Best
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.Collection: Attitude
Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.Collection: Society