Quotes by Oscar Fingall O'Flahertie Wills Wilde
The following are quotes from Oscar Fingall O'Flahertie Wills Wilde:
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
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.
Always love your enemies--nothing annoys them so much.
Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
Civilization requires slaves. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.
Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved. Difference of object does not alter singleness of passion. It merely intensifies it. We can have but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Find expression for a sorrow, and it will become dear to you. Find expression for a joy, and you will intensify its ectasy.
How else but through a broken heart May Lord Christ enter in
I am not young enough to know everything.
I can believe anything, provided it is incredible.
I delight in men over seventy. They always offer one the devotion of a lifetime.
I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.
It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
No, Ernest, don't talk about action. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
Punctuality is the thief of time.
Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief.
Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue more clever than another.
Some people go to priests others to poetry I to my friends.
The basis for optimism is sheer terror.
The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing.
The mere mechanical technique of acting can be taught, but the spirit that is to give life to lifeless forms must be born in a man. No dramatic college can teach its pupils to think or to feel. It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
The only thing one can do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.
There is so much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated it keeps us in touch with ignorance of the community.
These are the soul's changes. I don't believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism.
Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years.
To love one's self is the beginning of a life-long romance.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
When good Americans die they go to Paris.
When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.
Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything and when they grow older, they know it.
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