Oscar Wilde
Perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for men. There would be more joy in life if we were to accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes.Collection: Men
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.Collection: Art
There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.Collection: Life
Who, being loved, is poor?Collection: Love
A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.Collection: Art
All art is quite useless.Collection: Art
There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate - not to the artist, but to the public, blinding them to all but harming the artist not at all.Collection: Art
The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.Collection: Art
If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.Collection: Romantic
The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.Collection: Good
It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.Collection: Good
Biography lends to death a new terror.Collection: Death
Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.Collection: Life
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.Collection: Life
Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.Collection: Art
Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.Collection: Art
Death and vulgarity are the only two facts in the nineteenth century that one cannot explain away.Collection: Death
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.Collection: Failure
True friends stab you in the front.Collection: Friendship
Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.Collection: Women
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.Collection: Truth
There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.Collection: Money
The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.Collection: Imagination
If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.Collection: Sympathy
It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.Collection: Education
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.Collection: Good
He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.Collection: Friendship
An excellent man; he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.Collection: Friendship
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.Collection: Life
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.Collection: Poetry
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.Collection: Best
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.Collection: Art
If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.Collection: Society
The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.Collection: Age
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.Collection: Poetry
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.Collection: Death
Romantic art deals with the exception and with the individual. Good people, belonging as they do to the normal, and so, commonplace type, are artistically uninteresting.Collection: Romantic
When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.Collection: Life
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.Collection: War
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.Collection: Women
I can resist everything except temptation.Collection: Funny
I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.Collection: God
Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.Collection: Romantic
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.Collection: Intelligence
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.Collection: Intelligence
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.Collection: Travel
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.Collection: Great
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.Collection: Women
She is a peacock in everything but beauty.Collection: Beauty