Decay of Lying Quotes

If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture, and I prefer houses to the open air. In a house we all feel of the proper proportions. Everything is subordinated to us, fashioned for our use and our pleasure.

– Oscar Wilde

At twilight, nature is not without loveliness, though perhaps its chief use is to illustrate quotations from the poets.

– Oscar Wilde

What is interesting about people in good Society is the mask that each one of them wears, not the reality that lies behind the mask.

– Oscar Wilde

The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.

– Oscar Wilde

The crude commercialism of America, its materialising spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man who, according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherry-tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature.

– Oscar Wilde

As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognise the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as elsewhere, practice must precede perfection.

– Oscar Wilde

Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. The nineteenth century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac.

– Oscar Wilde

I quite admit that modern novels have many good points. All I insist on is that, as a class, they are quite unreadable.

– Oscar Wilde

In modern days…the fashion of writing poetry has become far too common, and should, if possible, be discouraged.

– Oscar Wilde

We don’t want to be harrowed and disgusted with an account of the doings of the lower orders.

– Oscar Wilde

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

– Oscar Wilde

It is always the unreadable that occurs.

– Oscar Wilde

It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.

– Oscar Wilde