3,435 Quotes by Oscar Wilde

I like men who have a future and women who have a past.

The world is a stage and the play is badly cast.

To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

As for being poisoned by a book, there is no such thing as that. Art has no influence upon action. It annihilates the desire to act. It is superbly sterile. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

Yet each man kills the thing he lovesBy each let this be heardSome do it with a bitter lookSome with a flattering wordThe coward does it with a kissThe brave man with a sword

Perhaps in nearly every joy, as certainly in every pleasure, cruelty has its place.

There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses.