Oscar Wilde

Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet (1854 - 1900)

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.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

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

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.

I sometimes think that God, in creating man, overestimated His ability.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

The English country gentleman galloping after a fox -- the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.

To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously quite easy. It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror, a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for middle-class respectability.

The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture, and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

The basis for optimism is sheer terror.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

Action is the last refuge of those who cannot dream.

Only the shallow know themselves.

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.

Oscar Wilde: "I wish I had said that." Whistler: "You will, Oscar; you will.