Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)
Irish essayist, novelist, playwright and poet.
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.
"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."
Ah! Don't say you agree with me. When people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
The growing influence of women is the one reassuring thing in our political life.
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
I've now realized for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.
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.
A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it.
Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
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.
Only good questions deserve good answers.
All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised.
When one pays a visit it is for the purpose of wasting other people's time, not one's own.
If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little.
The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value.
Even you are not rich enough, Sir Robert, to buy back your past. No man is.