Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Quotes

• 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.