To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual. Oscar Wilde
Everyone may not be good, but there’s always something good in everyone. Never judge anyone shortly because every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well. If it is worth having, it is worth waiting for. If it is worth attaining, it is worth fighting for. If it is worth experiencing, it is worth putting aside time for.
Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn’t there, and finding it.
It’s beauty that captures your attention. personality which captures your heart.
I have no objection to anyone’s sex life as long as they don’t practice it in the street and frighten the horses.
An optimist will tell you the glass is half-full; the pessimist, half-empty; and the engineer will tell you the glass is twice the size it needs to be.
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
Selfishness is not living your life as you wish to live it. Selfishness is wanting others to live their lives as you wish them to.
If you cannot prove a man wrong, don’t panic. You can always call him names.
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and a richness to life that nothing else can bring.
The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.
A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.
Don’t be discouraged if your children reject your advice. Years later they will offer it to their own offspring.
We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.
A man who takes himself too seriously will find that no one else takes him seriously.
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
There are moments when one has to choose between living one’s own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
In war, the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich makes slaves of the poor.
They’ve promised that dreams can come true – but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too.
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.
Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
The Most Inspiring Oscar Wilde Quotes
Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.
Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole!
Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.
The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?
True contentment is not having everything, but in being satisfied with everything you have.
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
In love, it is better to know and be disappointed, than to not know and always wonder.
Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
People may fail many times, but they become failures only when they begin to blame someone else. Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you.
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.
How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.
Love is like a war; easy to start but hard to end and you never know where it might take you.
Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.
Reported as Oscar Wilde’s last words on his death bed… This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has to go.
Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want.
I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.
Many of the great achievements of the world were accomplished by tired and discouraged men who kept on working.
Don’t be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for you. This is merely the beginning.