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Oscar Wilde quotes (95) It is only about things that do not interest one that one can give a really unbiased opinion which is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always valueless. Oscar Wilde Category: Opinion I choose my friends for their good looks my acquaintances for their good characters and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. Oscar Wilde Category: Alcohol Simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex. Oscar Wilde Category: Pleasure The great things in life are what they seem to be. And for that reason strange as it may sound to you often are very difficult to interpret (understand). Great passions are for the great of souls. Great events can only be seen by people who are on a level with them. We think we can have our visions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing visions have to be paid for. Strangely enough that is what makes them fine. Oscar Wilde Category: Disguise Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely if ever do they forgive them. Oscar Wilde Category: Children A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it. Oscar Wilde Category: Death Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people whom we personally dislike. Oscar Wilde Category: Morality Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason. Oscar Wilde Category: Housework Insincerity is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities. Oscar Wilde Category: Sincerity It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating. Oscar Wilde Category: Income Conscience and cowardice are really the same thing. Oscar Wilde Category: Conscience The good ended happily and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means. Oscar Wilde Category: Fiction A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. Oscar Wilde Category: Choice The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. Oscar Wilde Category: Censorship Always forgive your enemies nothing annoys them quite so much. Oscar Wilde Category: Endure I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement. Oscar Wilde Category: Invitation A visionary is one who can find his way by moonlight and see the dawn before the rest of the world. Oscar Wilde Category: Dream The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius. Oscar Wilde Category: Public I have nothing to declare except my genius. Oscar Wilde Category: Ego The only way a woman can ever reform her husband is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life. Oscar Wilde Category: Bore Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement. Oscar Wilde Category: Romance As long as war is looked upon as wicked it will always have its fascination. When it is looked on as vulgar it will cease to be popular. Oscar Wilde Category: War Music makes one feel so romantic at least it always gets on ones nerves which is the same thing nowadays. Oscar Wilde Category: Music Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who havent got the remotest knowledge of how to live nor the smallest instinct about when to die Oscar Wilde Category: Relatives Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. Oscar Wilde Category: Beauty Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. Oscar Wilde Category: Fashion With an evening coat and a white tie anybody even a stockbroker can gain a reputation for being civilized. Oscar Wilde Category: Apparel Perhaps after all America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected. Oscar Wilde Category: Ambition The only thing one can do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself. Oscar Wilde Category: Advice To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up. Oscar Wilde Category: Nature I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train. Oscar Wilde Category: Diary Life is too important to be taken seriously. Oscar Wilde Category: Importance The true perfection of man lies not in what man has but in what man is. Oscar Wilde Category: Love The longer I live the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us. Oscar Wilde Category: Life Some people cause happiness wherever they go. Some people cause happiness whenever they go. Oscar Wilde Category: Happiness I love acting. It is so much more real than life. Oscar Wilde Category: Acquaintance Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones. Oscar Wilde Category: Pretty Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman. Oscar Wilde Category: Humor All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. Thats his. Oscar Wilde Category: Mother Every woman is wrong until she cries. Oscar Wilde Category: Cry Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. Oscar Wilde Category: Wrong In all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane. Oscar Wilde Category: Adversary Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess. Oscar Wilde Category: Excess Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow. Oscar Wilde Category: Serious We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars. Oscar Wilde Category: Hope A man cant be too careful in the choice of his enemies. Oscar Wilde Category: Enemy I can resist everything except temptation. Oscar Wilde Category: Temptation Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do. Oscar Wilde Category: Work Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. Oscar Wilde Category: Democracy No man is rich enough to buy back his past. Oscar Wilde Category: Past There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession not the priest that gives us absolution. Oscar Wilde Category: Hypocrisy There is no such thing as good influence. Oscar Wilde Category: Immorality Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship and it is far the best ending for one. Oscar Wilde Category: Friendship Action is the last refuge of those who cannot dream. Oscar Wilde Category: Action I am not young enough to know everything. [see J. M. Barrie] Oscar Wilde Category: Age I can sympathize with everything except suffering. Oscar Wilde Category: Unsorted Education is an admirable thing but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. Oscar Wilde Category: Education It is the spectator and not life that art really mirrors. Oscar Wilde Category: Art Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event. Oscar Wilde Category: Anniversary When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know it is. Oscar Wilde Category: Money I was saying continued the Rocket I was saying What was I saying? You were talking about yourself replied the Roman Candle. Of course; I knew I was discussing some interesting subject when I was so rudely interrupted. Oscar Wilde Category: Discussion Ah well then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means. Oscar Wilde Category: Last Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious. Oscar Wilde Category: Woe A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at. Oscar Wilde Category: World Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. Oscar Wilde Category: Illusions Argument are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing. Oscar Wilde Category: Argument Ordinary riches can be stolen real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you. Oscar Wilde Category: Ordinary Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief. Oscar Wilde Category: Religion The typewriting machine when played with expression is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation. Oscar Wilde Category: Piano The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism conscious of this and having tradesman-like habits supplies their demands. Oscar Wilde Category: Curiosity Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live; it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other peoples lives alone not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognizes infinite variety of type as a delightful thing accepts it acquiesces in it enjoys it. Oscar Wilde Category: Selfishness Marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men disagree. Oscar Wilde Category: Disagree The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. Oscar Wilde Category: Gossip Pessimist: One who when he has the choice of two evils chooses both. Oscar Wilde Category: Pessimist Those things which the English public never forgives - youth power and enthusiasm. Oscar Wilde Category: Forgive Nothing that actually occurs is of the smallest importance. Oscar Wilde Category: Nothing Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation. Oscar Wilde Category: Complacency One can survive everything nowadays except death and live down everything except a good reputation. Oscar Wilde Category: Reputation Cecil Graham: What is a cynic? Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Oscar Wilde Category: Cynic Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth. Oscar Wilde Category: Self The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Oscar Wilde Category: Idea I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best. Oscar Wilde Category: Satisfied Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building. Oscar Wilde Category: Marriage Only the shallow know themselves. Oscar Wilde Category: Know Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes. Oscar Wilde Category: Experience I can believe anything provided it is quite incredible. Oscar Wilde Category: Belief To get back ones youth one has merely to repeat ones follies. Oscar Wilde Category: Repeat Nothing is so aggravating as calmness. Oscar Wilde Category: Calm A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. Oscar Wilde Category: Conceit If you don't get everything you want think of the things you don't get that you don't want. Oscar Wilde Category: Do 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. Oscar Wilde Category: Civil In this world there are only two tragedies: one is not getting what one wants and the other is getting it. Oscar Wilde Category: Tragedy The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer. Oscar Wilde Category: Fidelity We teach people how to remember we never teach them how to grow. Oscar Wilde Category: Others The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. Oscar Wilde Category: Journalism |
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