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Miscellaneous quotes

973 quotes from 439 people

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The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.
Oscar Wilde1854–1900The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)In context
To have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact, talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you.
Oscar Wilde1854–1900
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.
Oscar Wilde1854–1900The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)In context
The only possible society is oneself.
Oscar Wilde1854–1900An Ideal Husband (1895), Act III
Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.
Oscar Wilde1854–1900The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Act IIIn context
After the first glass you see things as you wish they were. After the second glass you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.
Oscar Wilde1854–1900Said about Absinthe. Quoted in Ada Leverson, Letters to the Sphinx from Oscar Wilde: With Reminiscences of the Author (London: Duckworth, 1930)
Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.
Oscar Wilde1854–1900The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Chapter XVIIIIn context
- Luck
Wherever you come near the human race there’s layers and layers of nonsense.
Thornton Wilder1897–1975Our Town (1938), “Stage Manager”
Never murder a man who is committing suicide.
Woodrow Wilson1856–1924Letter to Bernard Baruch (19 August 1916), PWW 38:51
I still have my feet on the ground, I just wear better shoes.
Oprah Winfreyborn 1954
Fashion’s not about looking back. It’s always about looking forward.
Anna Wintourborn 1949In R.J. Cutler’s 2009 documentary film The September Issue.
You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Culture and Value (1980), 1929, p. 1
Though we see the same world, we see it through different eyes. Any help we can give you must be different from that you can give yourselves, and perhaps the value of that help may lie in the fact of that difference.
Virginia Woolf1882–1941Three Guineas (1938), Ch. 1, p. 18
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.
Virginia Woolf1882–1941Mrs Dalloway (1925), Part 1In context
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it has been of yore;⁠—
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
William Wordsworth1770–1850Ode: Intimations of Immortality (1807)In context