Oscar Wilde Quotes - Page 11

The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development.
Oscar Wilde
Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination.They are limited to their century. No glamour every transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in any of them.
Oscar Wilde
Men always want to be a woman's first love, -women want to be a man's last romance.
Oscar Wilde
Give women the right opportunities and they are capable of everything.
Oscar Wilde
She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. It is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image precious. Her feet are very pretty, but they are not feet of clay. White porcelain feet, if you like. They have been through the fire, and what fire does not destroy, it hardens. She has had experiences.
Oscar Wilde
Lady Caroline: As far as I can make out, the young women of the present day seem to make it the sole object of their lives to be always playing with fire. Mrs. Allonby: The one advantage of playing with fire, Lady Caroline, is that one never gets even singed. It is the people who don't know how to play with it who get burned up.
Oscar Wilde
LADY BRACKNELLThirty-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.
Oscar Wilde
A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.
Oscar Wilde
She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness. It is the feet of clay that make the gold of the image precious.
Oscar Wilde
Well, in the first place girls never marry the men they flirt with. Girls don't think it right.
Oscar Wilde
To be popular one must be a mediocrity.""Not with Women," said the duchess, shaking her head; "and women rule the world. I assure you we can't bear mediocrities. We women, as someone says, love with our ears, just as you men love with your eyes, if you ever love at all.""It seems to me that we never do anything else," murmered Dorian.
Oscar Wilde
Plain women are always jealous of their husbands. Beautiful women never are. They are always so occupied with being jealous of other women's husbands.
Oscar Wilde
Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
Oscar Wilde
Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.
Oscar Wilde
Women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack by sudden and strange surrenders.
Oscar Wilde
I am sick of women who love one. Women who hate one are much more interesting.
Oscar Wilde
As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her daughter, she is perfectly satisfied
Oscar Wilde
A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
Oscar Wilde
If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first.
Oscar Wilde
Lady Bracknell, I hate to seem inquisitive, but would you kindly inform me who I am?
Oscar Wilde
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast
Oscar Wilde
Oh, I hate the cheap severity of abstract ethics!
Oscar Wilde
Women treat us [men] like humanity treats gods – they worship us and keep bothering us to do something.
Oscar Wilde
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Oscar Wilde
I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
Oscar Wilde
Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman
Oscar Wilde
I'm too old to know everything
Oscar Wilde
He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one's eyes, and does not look at him.
Oscar Wilde
Well I won't argue about the matter. You always want to argue about things.That is exactly what things were originally made for.
Oscar Wilde
People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately.
Oscar Wilde
I have no objection to anyone’s sex life as long as they don’t practice it in the street and frighten the horses.
Oscar Wilde
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Oscar Wilde
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Oscar Wilde
Crying is for plain women. Pretty women go shopping.
Oscar Wilde
To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
Oscar Wilde
Man is complete in himself. When they go into the world, the world will disagree with them. That is inevitable. The world hates Individualism. But that is not to trouble them. They are to be calm and self-centred. If a man takes their cloak, they are to give him their coat, just to show that material things are of no importance. If people abuse them, they are not to answer back. What does it signify? The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realise through that sin his true perfection.
Oscar Wilde
He wants to enslave you.''I shudder at the thought of being free.
Oscar Wilde
The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual violence, they are not to be violent in turn. That would be to fall to the same low level. After all, even in prison, a man can be quite free. His soul can be free. His personality can be untroubled. He can be at peace. And, above all things, they are not to interfere with other people or judge them in any way. Personality is a very mysterious thing. A man cannot always be estimated by what he does. He may keep the law, and yet be worthless. He may break the law, and yet be fine. He may be bad, without ever doing anything bad. He may commit a sin against society, and yet realize through that sin his true perfection.
Oscar Wilde
The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
Oscar Wilde
Yes: I am a dreamer. For 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.
Oscar Wilde
In war, the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich makes slaves of the poor.
Oscar Wilde
It would be unfair to expect other people to be as brilliant as oneself.
Oscar Wilde
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating- people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
Oscar Wilde
Pray don't talk to me about the weather, Mr. Worthing. Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else. And that makes me quite nervous.
Oscar Wilde
It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco.It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world
Oscar Wilde
Most people are boring and stupid.
Oscar Wilde
I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.
Oscar Wilde
Friendship...is not something you learn in school,but if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship you really haven't learned anything.
Oscar Wilde
Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.
Oscar Wilde
What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb.American novels, answered Lord Henry.
Oscar Wilde
The worst of it is that I am perpetually being punished for nothing; this governor loves to punish, and he punishes by taking my books away from me. It's perfectly awful to let the mind grind itself away between the upper and nether millstones of regret and remorse without respite; with books my life would be livable -- any life.
Oscar Wilde
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
Oscar Wilde
It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.
Oscar Wilde
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
Oscar Wilde
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
Oscar Wilde
The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional.
Oscar Wilde
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
Oscar Wilde
The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional.
Oscar Wilde
Punctuality is the thief of time.
Oscar Wilde
The gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes bring you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses.
Oscar Wilde