Oscar Wilde Quotes

It is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.

There is no sin except stupidity.

Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community, and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilisation.

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised.

To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

There is no such thing as a good influence. Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtures are not real to him. His sins, if there are such thing as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.

But I didn’t say he was married. I said he was engaged to be married. There is a great difference. I have a distinct remembrance of being married, but I have no recollection at all of being engaged. I am inclined to think that I never was engaged.

Conformity is the last refuge of the unimaginitive

I think it's very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person.

After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.

It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.

For what man has sought for is, indeed, neither pain nor pleasure, but simply Life. Man has sought to live intensely, fully, perfectly. When he can do so without exercising restraint on others, or suffering it ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to him, he will be saner, healthier, more civilised, more himself. Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.