Best 1857 quotes of Oscar Wilde on MyQuotes

A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous, treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in pain. The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and the tyranny of an old and loveless man. Yes, it was an interesting background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect as it were. Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

A beggar hates his benefactor as much as he hates himself for begging.

A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say at the age of eighteen.

A book or poem which has no pity in it had better not be written.

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

Absolute catholicity of taste is not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art.

A burnt child loves the fire.

All art is quite useless.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight.

A community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurence of crime.

Action is limited and relative. Unlimited and absolute is the vision of him who sits at ease and watches, who walks in loneliness and dreams.

Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. . .

Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the common world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all.

A daughter is a mother's gender partner, her closest ally in the family confederacy, an extension of herself. -Author Unknown As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.

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.

Aestheticism is a search after the signs of the beautiful. It is the science of the beautiful through which men seek the correlation of the arts. It is, to speak more exactly, the search after the secret of life.

After a good quality dinner one will be able to forgive anybody, still one's own relations.

After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one’s tears.

After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed and mourning over tragedies that were not my own.

After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.

A gentleman is one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.

Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilization.

A glass of absinthe is as poetical as anything in the world. What difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset?

A good friend will always stab you in the front.

A grapefruit is just a lemon that saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.

A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating.

Ah! happy day they whose hearts can break And peace of pardon win! How else may man make straight his plan And cleanse his soul from Sin? How else but through a broken heart May Lord Christ enter in?

Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.

Ah, on what little things does happiness depend.

Ah! realize your youth while you have it. Don’t squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar. These are the sickly aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.

Ah! somehow life is bigger after all Than any painted angel could we see The God that is within us!

Ah! that quite does for me. I haven't a word to say... Too much care was taken with our education, I am afraid. To have been well brought up is a great drawback nowadays. It shuts one out from so much.

Ah! The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, women...merely adored.

A kiss may ruin a human life

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

Alas! it is a fearful thing To feel another's guilt!

Algy, you always adopt a strictly immoral attitude towards life. You are not quite old enough to do that.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

A live unexamined isn't worth living. I will add, "A life unlived isn't worth examining.

All art is immortal. For emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of art, and emotion for the sake of action is the aim of life.

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and it degrades those over whom it is exercised.

All bad art is the result of good intentions.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.

All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.

All criticism is a form of autobiography

All great ideas are dangerous.

A man who marries without knowing Bunbury has a very tedious time of it.

All modes of government are failures. Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies are unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. It has been found out. I must say that it was high time, for all authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised.

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.