Dramatist · Irish · 1854 – 1900 · 199 quotes
When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.
Oscar Wilde
Dramatist · Irish · 1854 – 1900
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.
Memory... is the diary that we all carry about with us.
When good Americans die they go to Paris.
Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.
It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
I have nothing to declare except my genuis.
I can resist everything except temptation.
I am not young enough to know everything.
Why was I born with such contemporaries?
Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
It is always the unreadable that occurs.
When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.
I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.
Who, being loved, is poor?
Biography lends to death a new terror.
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
A true friend stabs you in the front.
Those whom the gods love grow young.
True friends stab you in the front.
Hatred is blind, as well as love.
I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
Everything popular is wrong.
Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
All art is quite useless.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Charity creates a multitude of sins.
Only the shallow know themselves.
There is no sin except stupidity.
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
