The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.
Oscar Wilde
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde
Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.
Oscar Wilde
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
Oscar Wilde
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it
is not.
Oscar Wilde
Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory.
Oscar Wilde
Music makes one feel so romantic – at least it always gets on one’s nerves – which is the same thing nowadays.
Oscar Wilde
My great mistake, the fault for which I can’t forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.
Oscar Wilde
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
Oscar Wilde
No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
Oscar Wilde
No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.
Oscar Wilde
No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
Oscar Wilde
Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
Oscar Wilde
Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.
Oscar Wilde
Nothing makes one so vain as being told one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.
Oscar Wilde
Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.
Oscar Wilde
Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.
Oscar Wilde
Of course America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
Oscar Wilde
Of course I have played outdoor games. I once played dominoes in an open air cafe in Paris.
Oscar Wilde
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
Oscar Wilde
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
Oscar Wilde
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
Oscar Wilde
One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
Oscar Wilde
One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.
Oscar Wilde
Only the shallow know themselves.
Oscar Wilde
Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
Oscar Wilde
Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do
more.
Oscar Wilde
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
Oscar Wilde
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
Oscar Wilde
Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses
both.
Oscar Wilde
Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.
Oscar Wilde
