Oscar Wilde

Bekannte Zitate von Oscar Wilde

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

I put all my genius into my life I put only my talent into my works.

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life now that I am old I know that it is.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.

One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.

Some cause happiness wherever they go others whenever they go.

The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.

If one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk.

How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.

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

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.

True friends stab you in the front.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

All art is quite useless.

There is nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It is a thing no married man knows anything about.

Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.

An excellent man he has no enemies and none of his friends like him.

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

I see when men love women. They give them but a little of their lives. But women when they love give everything.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.

Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our gigantic intellects.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be ugly.

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

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

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

Hatred is blind, as well as love.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.

When good Americans die they go to Paris.

The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.

Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.

In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.

The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.

When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.

Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life's sores the better.

Those whom the gods love grow young.

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

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.

The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

In married life three is company and two none.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.