Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

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

I love acting. It is so much more real than life.

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

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

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

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.

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

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

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

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

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

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist, 1891

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

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

Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist, 1891

Oscar Wilde

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

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

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde, "De Profundis"

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

... Nature, whose sweet rains fall of just and unjust alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undetected. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.

Oscar Wilde, "De Profundis"

Oscar Wilde

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

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

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

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

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

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

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

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

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

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

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

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

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

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

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

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

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

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

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.

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

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

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.

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

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

The basis for optimism is sheer terror.

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

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

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

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde, as he sipped champagne on his deathbed

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

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

Oscar Wilde, as he sipped champagne on his deathbed

Oscar Wilde

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

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

Oscar Wilde