Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)
Irish essayist, novelist, playwright and poet.
Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.
Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.
For the recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses. It has led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not growth its aim. So that man thought that the important thing was to have, and did not know that the important thing is to be. The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is.
The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it.
Only good questions deserve good answers.
God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too.
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.
A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it.
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want.
I've now realized for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
The growing influence of women is the one reassuring thing in our political life.
Ah! Don't say you agree with me. When people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
"She said that she would dance with me if I brought her red roses," cried the young Student; "but in all my garden there is no red rose."
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.
Charity creates a multitude of sins.
The dinner table was Wilde's event and made him the greatest talker of his time…