Oscar Wilde, (1854-1900) Anglo-Irish poet, novelist, writer Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [1-25] of 25 Oscar Wilde quotesOscar Wilde QuotesOscar Wilde Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress had been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.~ Oscar Wilde Newspapers have degenerated. They may now be absolutely relied upon.~ Oscar Wilde Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.~ Oscar Wilde Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another.~ Oscar Wilde We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.~ Oscar Wilde Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.~ Oscar Wilde Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.~ Oscar Wilde As one reads history, not in the expurgated editions written for schoolboys and passmen, but in the original authorities of each time, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.~ Oscar Wilde The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.~ Oscar Wilde [T]hough of all poses a moral pose is the most offensive, still to have a pose at all is something.~ Oscar Wilde Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.~ Oscar Wilde 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.~ Oscar Wilde Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.~ Oscar Wilde Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to disturb monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine.~ Oscar Wilde 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 All authority is quite degrading.~ Oscar Wilde The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. ... One might point out how the Renaissance was great, because it sought to solve no social problem, and busied itself not about such things, but suffered the individual to develop freely, beautifully, and naturally, and so had great and individual artists, and great, individual men. One might point out how Louis XIV, by creating the modern state, destroyed the individualism of the artist ...~ Oscar Wilde A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.~ Oscar Wilde A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.~ Oscar Wilde He hasn't one redeeming vice.~ Oscar Wilde I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the house-tops.~ Oscar Wilde I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.~ Oscar Wilde Lawyers have been known to wrest from reluctant juries triumphant verdicts of acquittal for their clients, even when those clients, as often happens, were clearly and unmistakably innocent.~ Oscar Wilde Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.~ Oscar Wilde Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.~ Oscar Wilde Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print