The quotations of

Oscar Wilde

Irish poet, playwright, and aesthete

1854–1900

173 quotes, most often on Marriage, Love and Comedy. Part of the Writers and Poets collections.

A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)In context
Where there is no exaggeration there is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding.
- Love
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
- America
I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)In context
- Acting
It is only about things that do not interest one, that one can give a really unbiased opinion; and this is no doubt the reason why an unbiased opinion is always valueless.
Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies.
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)In context
- Love
Everyone who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
The Decay of Lying (1889), Spoken by “Vivian.”
- Education
One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)In context
My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don’t know anything at all.
Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), Act II
- Age
A man’s very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life.
- Morality
When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)In context
Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects.
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)In context
- Forgiveness
- Women
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)In context
- Writing
An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be. It is hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself.
The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Act IIn context
- Marriage
Yet each man kills the thing he loves, from all let this be heard. Some does it with a bitter look, some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss the brave man with the sword.
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), Pt. I, st. 7In context

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