Oscar Wilde

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.

Men always want to be a woman's first love; women have a more subtle instinct: what they like is to be a man's last romance.

Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

No man should have a secret from his wife; she invariably finds out.

A man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.

Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it.

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on; it is never of any use to oneself.

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

More than half modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.

Duty is what one expects from others.

I am not young enough to know everything.

To give and not expect return, that is what lies at the heart of love.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.

True friends stab you in the front.

Life is one fool thing after another where as love is two fool things after each other.

Woman are meant to be loved, not to be understood.

Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.

Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory.

When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.

We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

Those whom the gods love grow young.

But what is the difference between literature and journalism? Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all.

We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.

As long as war is regarded as wicked it will always have its fascinations. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.

Imagination is a quality given a man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But it is better to be good than to be ugly.

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man�s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.

To believe is very dull. To doubt is intensely engrossing. To be on the alert is to live, to be lulled into security is to die.

America is the first country to have gone from barbarism to decadence without the usual intervening period of civilization.

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Punctuality is the thief of time.

I can resist everything except temptation.

Ultimately the bond of all companionship, wheather in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.

One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

Where there is no exaggeration there is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding.

It is only about things that do not interest one, that one can give a really unbiased opinion; and this is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always valueless.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.

Self-denial is the shining sore on the leprous body of Christianity.

All art is quite useless.

No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life.

The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be. It is hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.

The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all.

A kiss may ruin a human life.

The mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-�-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves, from all let this be heard. Some does it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss the brave man with the sword.

When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.

My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.

Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.

It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.

Skepticism is the beginning of faith.

Lots of people act well, but few people talk well. This shows that talking is the more difficult of the two.

To have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact, talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you.

One should never trust a woman who tells her real age. If she tells that, she'll tell anything.

It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.

Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attraction of others.

Men can be analyzed, women merely adored.

Everyone who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.