Lord Caversham: You seem to me to be living entirely for pleasure. Lord Goring: What else is there to live for, father? Nothing ages like happiness. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Act 1.
In Quote Pictures Rugby is a game for barbarians played by gentlemen. Football is a game for gentlemen played by barbarians. – Oscar Wilde Attributed
I have often observed that in married households the champagne is rarely of a first-rate brand. – Oscar Wilde The Importance of being Earnest, Lane, Act 1.
I saw the governess, Jane…She was far too good-looking to be in any respectable household. – Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance, Lady Caroline, Act 1.
It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art. – Oscar Wilde The Critic as Artist
Lady Basildon: I delight in talking politics. I talk them all day long. But I can’t bear listening to them. I don’t know how the unfortunate men in the House stand these long debates. Lord Goring: By never listening. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Act 1.
It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it. – Oscar Wilde
Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them They seem, as a class, to have absolutely no sense of moral responsibility. – Oscar Wilde The Importance of being Earnest, Algernon, Act 1.
High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. – Oscar Wilde The Soul of Man Under Socialism
Lady Caroline: In my young days, Miss Worsley, one never met anyone in society who worked for their living. It was not considered the thing. Hester: In America those are the people we respect most. Lady Caroline: I have no doubt of it. – Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance, Act 1.
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
If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism. – Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere’s Fan, Lord Darlington, Act 1.
Mrs. Cheveley…she was a genius in the daytime and a beauty at night. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Mabel Chiltern, Act 1.
At twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets. – Oscar Wilde The Decay of Lying
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all. – Oscar Wilde
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. – Oscar Wilde
She certainly has a wonderful faculty of remembering people’s names, and forgetting their faces. – Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance, Lady Caroline, Act 1.
I don’t play accurately – any one can play accurately – but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life. – Oscar Wilde The Importance of being Earnest, Algernon, Act 1.
One is tempted to define man as a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason. – Oscar Wilde The Critic as Artist
I am thoroughly sick of pearls. They make one look so plain, so good and so intellectual. – Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband, Mabel Chiltern, Act 1.
To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity. – Oscar Wilde
The very essence of romance is uncertainty. – Oscar Wilde The Importance of being Earnest, Algernon, Act 1.
Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion. – Oscar Wilde The Soul of Man Under Socialism