Oscar Wilde Quotes

The true perfection of man lies not in what man has, but in what man is.

Oscar Wilde

If a woman cannot make her mistakes charming, she is only a female.

Oscar Wilde

SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: … But may I ask, at heart, are you an optimist or a pessimist? Those seem to be the only two fashionable religions left to us nowadays.MRS CHEVELEY: Oh, I'm neither. Optimism begins in a broad grin, and Pessimism ends with blue spectacles. Besides, they are both of them merely poses.SIR ROBERT CHILTERN: You prefer to be natural?MRS CHEVELEY: Sometimes. But it is such a very difficult pose to keep up.(Act I., lines 132-140)

Oscar Wilde

The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination,made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain,danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks.

Oscar Wilde

Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.

Oscar Wilde

I'm too old to know everything

Oscar Wilde

In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.

Oscar Wilde