A man can live for three days without bread, but no man can live for one day without poetry. – Oscar Wilde Dinners and Dishes
The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one’s clean linen in public. – Oscar Wilde The Importance of being Earnest, Algernon, Act 1.
Lord Illingworth: Women have become too brilliant. Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humour in the woman. Mrs. Allonby: Or the want of it in a man. – Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance, Act 1.
There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. – Oscar Wilde The Soul of Man Under Socialism
Ambition is the last refuge of the failure. – Oscar Wilde Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young
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 A Woman of No Importance, Lord Illingworth, Act 1.
Popularity is the only insult that has not yet been offered to Mr. Whistler. – Oscar Wilde On artist James Whistler
The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value. – Oscar Wilde A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated
In married life three is company and two is none. – Oscar Wilde The Importance of being Earnest, Algernon, Act 1.
Lady Hunstanton: Lord Illingworth, you don’t think that uneducated people should be allowed to have votes? Lord Illingworth: I think they are the only people who should. – Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance, Act 1.
One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Lady Chiltern, Act 1.
But we are positively getting elbowed into the corner. Our husbands would really forget our existence if we didn’t nag at them from time to time, just to remind them that we have a perfect legal right to do so. – Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere’s Fan, Duchess of Berwick, Act 1.
Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. – Oscar Wilde The Soul of Man Under Socialism
The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all. – Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance, Lord Illingworth, Act 1.
I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood. – Oscar Wilde The Critic as Artist
Do you really think, Arthur, that it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations that it requires strength, strength and courage, to yield to. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Sir Robert Chiltern, Act 2.
Ah! That must be Aunt Augusta. Only relatives, or creditors, ever ring in that Wagnerian manner. – Oscar Wilde The Importance of being Earnest, Algernon, Act 1.
We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken. We are specially designed to appeal to the sense of humour. – Oscar Wilde De Profundis
Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of dead religions. – Oscar Wilde Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young
Mrs. Allonby: Have you tried a good reputation Lord Illingworth: It is one of the many annoyances to which I have never been subjected. – Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance, Act 1.
He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one’s eyes, and does not look at him. – Oscar Wilde The Birthday of the Intanta
Nor do I in any way approve of the modern sympathy with invalids. I consider it morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others. Health is the primary duty of life. – Oscar Wilde The Importance of being Earnest, Lady Bracknell, Act 1.
America is a Paradise for women – that is why, like Eve, American women are so extremely anxious to get out of it. – Oscar Wilde
Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons. What this century worships is wealth. The God of this century is wealth. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Sir Robert Chiltern, Act 2.