Oscar Wilde Quotes

What men call the shadow of the body is not the shadow of the body, but is the body of the soul.

Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.

I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won't argue with you. It is only the intellectually lost who ever argue.

The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact, scarcely any one at all escapes.

In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press. That is an Improvement certainly. but still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralising. Somebody - was it Burke? - called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time, no doubt. But at the present moment it really is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, The Lords Spiritual have nothing to say and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by journalism.

Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play... I tell you, that it is on things like these that our lives depend.

A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

When you really want love, you will find it waiting for you.

The number 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.

The supreme vice is shallowness.