Quotations from

Oscar Wilde

About

Picture of Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish author, poet and playwright. After writing in different literary styles throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular and influential dramatists in London in the early 1890s. He was a key figure in the emerging Aestheticism movement of the late 19th century and is widely regarded as the greatest playwright of the Victorian era. Wilde is best known for his Gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890), his epigrams, plays and bedtime stories for children, as well as his criminal conviction in 1895 for gross indecency and for practicing homosexual acts.

from Wikipedia

Quotes from Oscar Wilde

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

—Oscar Wilde

I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

—Oscar Wilde

The needs of society determine its ethics.

—Oscar Wilde

I can resist anything but temptation.

—Oscar Wilde

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.

—Oscar Wilde

I have not yet met with a sorrow that could not be borne, nor with one who's passing did not leave me stronger.

—Oscar Wilde

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.

—Oscar Wilde

Anyone can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.

—Oscar Wilde

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

—Oscar Wilde

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

—Oscar Wilde

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.

—Oscar Wilde

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 among them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary.

—Oscar Wilde

We all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little.

—Oscar Wilde

Women are made to be loved, not understood.

—Oscar Wilde

The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.

—Oscar Wilde

Books

Oscar Wilde has the following books quoted on Quodid: