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Advice
Engrave this Quote LORD GORING:
I am glad you have called. I am going to give you some good advice.
MRS. CHEVELEY:
Oh! pray don't. One should never give a woman anything that she can't wear in the evening.
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-Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband: Act 3
Engrave this Quote LORD GORING:
My father told me to go to bed an hour ago. I don't see why I shouldn't give you the same advice. I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
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-Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband, Act 1
Age
Engrave this Quote MRS. ALLONBY: She told me yesterday, and in quite a loud voice too, that she was only eighteen. It was most annoying.
LORD ILLINGWORTH: One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything.
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-Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance
Engrave this Quote "I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not."
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-Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan, 1892
Engrave this Quote "That does not seem to me to be a grave objection. Thirty-five is a very attractive age. London society is full of women of the very highest birth who have, of their own free choice, remained thirty-five for years. Lady Dumbleton is an instance in point. To my own knowledge she has been thirty-five ever since she arrived at the age of forty, which was many years ago now. I see no reason why our dear Cecily should not be even still more attractive at the age you mention than she is at present. There will be a large accumulation of property. "
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-Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest (spoken by the character Lady Bracknell), 1893
Art
Engrave this Quote "All that I desire to point out is the general principle that Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life."
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-Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Living, 1891
Artist, The
Engrave this Quote It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist's life is that he cannot realise his ideal. But the true tragedy that dogs the steps of most artists is that they realise their ideal too absolutely. For, when the ideal is realised, it is robbed of its wonder and its mystery, and becomes simply a new starting-point for an ideal that is other than itself.
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-Oscar Wilde, from "Intentions"
Attitude
Engrave this Quote "The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
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-Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan
Beauty
Engrave this Quote And beauty is a form of genius -- is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.
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-Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (ch. 2)
Color
Engrave this Quote Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.
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-Oscar Wilde
Criticism
Engrave this Quote I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across ... "Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best." The mortality among pianists in that place is marvellous.
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-Oscar Wilde, Impressions of America, 1906
Curiosity
Engrave this Quote "The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands."
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-Oscar Wilde
Devotion
Engrave this Quote Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.
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-Oscar Wilde
Differences
Engrave this Quote There is a fatality about all physical and intellectual distinction, the sort of fatality that seems to dog through history the faltering steps of kings. It is better not to be different from one's fellows. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live, undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it, from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are- my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray's good looks- we shall all suffer for what the gods have given us, suffer terribly.
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-Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 1, pg. 4, 1891
Education
Engrave this Quote I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood. Don't degrade me into the position of giving you useful information. Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. Through the parted curtains of the window I see the moon like a clipped piece of silver. Like gilded bees the stars cluster round her. The sky is a hard hollow sapphire. Let us go out into the night. Thought is wonderful, but adventure is more wonderful still. Who knows but we may meet Prince Florizel of Bohemia, and hear the fair Cuban tell us that she is not what she seems?
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-Oscar Wilde, Intentions: The critic as artist, 1890
Experience
Engrave this Quote "Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing."
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-Oscar Wilde, attributed, no source found
Fate & Destiny
Engrave this Quote "One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be."
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-Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
Friends
Engrave this Quote "True friends stab you in the front."
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-Oscar Wilde
Genius
Engrave this Quote The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
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-Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist, 1891
Happiness
Engrave this Quote "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."
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-Oscar Wilde
Hypocrisy
Engrave this Quote How pleasant it was in the garden! And how delightful other people's emotions were! -- much more delightful than their ideas, it seemed to him. One's own soul, and the passions of one's friends -- those were the fascinating things in life. He pictured to himself with silent amusement the tedious luncheon that he had missed by staying so long with Basil Hallward. Had be gone to his aunt's, he would have been sure to have met Lord Goodbody there, and the whole conversation would have been about the feeding of the poor and the necessity for model lodging-houses. Each class would have preached the importance of those virtues, for whose exercise there was no necessity in their own lives. The rich would have spoken on the value of thrift, and the idle grown eloquent over the dignity of labour. It was charming to have escaped all that!
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-Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 1
Ideas
Engrave this Quote The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices.
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-Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 1 [Lord Henry speaking], 1891
Imagination
Engrave this Quote "Consistency is the last resort of the unimaginative."
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-Oscar Wilde
Integrity
Engrave this Quote I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do.
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-Oscar Wilde, Lord Henry, in the "The Picture of Dorian Gray", ch. 6, 1891
Life
Engrave this Quote The great events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion.
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-Oscar Wilde
Literary
Engrave this Quote "Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!"
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-Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Mankind, Man
Engrave this Quote It will be a marvellous thing - the true personality of man - when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flower-like, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not prove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by material things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything, and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it be. It will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like itself. It will love them because they will be different. And yet, while it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing helps us by being what it is. The personality of man will be very wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child.
In its development it will be assisted by Christianity, if men desire that; but if men do not desire that, it will develop none the less surely. For it will not worry itself about the past, nor care whether things happened or did not happen. Nor will it admit any laws but its own laws; nor any authority but its own authority. Yet it will love those who sought to intensify it, and speak often of them. And of these Christ was one.
"Know Thyself" was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, "Be Thyself" shall be written. And the message of Christ to man was simply "Be Thyself." That is the secret of Christ.
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-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, "Fortnightly Review", February, 1891
Media
Engrave this Quote "By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, [journalism] keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community."
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-Oscar Wilde
Men & Women
Engrave this Quote "Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance."
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-Oscar Wilde
Morals
Engrave this Quote Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
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-Oscar Wilde
Mother
Engrave this Quote "All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his."
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-Oscar Wilde
Music
Engrave this Quote "...music is the perfect type of art. Music can never reveal its ultimate secret. This, also, is the explanation of the value of limitations in art. The sculptor gladly surrenders imitative colour, and the painter the actual dimensions of form, because by such renunciations they are able to avoid too definite a presentation of the Real, which would be mere imitation, and too definite a realisation of the Ideal, which would be too purely intellectual. It is through its very incompleteness that art becomes complete in beauty, and so addresses itself, not to the faculty of recognition nor to the faculty of reason, but to the aesthetic sense alone, which, while accepting both reason and recognition as stages of apprehension, subordinates them both to a pure synthetic impression of the work of art as a whole, and, taking whatever alien emotional elements the work may possess, uses their very complexity as a means by which a richer unity may be added to the ultimate impression itself."
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-Oscar Wilde, Intentions
Pleasure
Engrave this Quote Pleasure is Nature’s test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment.
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-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, "Fortnightly Review (London)", February, 1891
Protest
Engrave this Quote 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 civilization.
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-Oscar Wilde
Relationships
Engrave this Quote The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbour with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. I mean everything that I have said. I have the greatest contempt for optimism. As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it. As for marriage, of course that would be silly, but there are other and more interesting bonds between men and women. I will certainly encourage them. They have the charm of being fashionable.
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-Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890
Romance
Engrave this Quote When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
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-Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Sadness
Engrave this Quote For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us. Outside, the day may be blue and gold, but the light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is grey and niggard. It is always twilight in one's cell, as it is always twilight in one's heart. And in the sphere of thought, no less than in the sphere of time, motion is no more.
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-Oscar Wilde, De Profoundis
Selfishness
Engrave this Quote Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
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-Oscar Wilde
Soul
Engrave this Quote "Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul."
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-Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
Temptation
Engrave this Quote But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself. The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are punished for our refusals. Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode of purification. Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure, or the luxury of a regret. 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, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also.
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-Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
Thought
Engrave this Quote A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. It is grossly selfish to require of one's neighbour that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why should he? If he can think, he will probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is monstrous to require thought of any kind from him.
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-Oscar Wilde, The soul of man under Socialism (essay), 1891
Torture
Engrave this Quote "The community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime."
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-Oscar Wilde, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism", 1891
Tragedy
Engrave this Quote In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst; the last is a real tragedy!
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-Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan
Truth
Engrave this Quote "The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."
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-Oscar Wilde
Women
Engrave this Quote "Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat."
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-Oscar Wilde





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