Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-10-16 – 1900-11-30) was an Irish playwright, poet and author of essays and novels.

See also

• The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

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• God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too.
  • Quoted in "In Victorian days and other papers" By Sir David Oswald Hunter-Blair, (New York: Longmans, 1939, p122)

• I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
  • Quoted in "Oscar Wilde, an idler's impression" By Edgar Saltus, (Chicago Brothers of the Book, 1917, p20)

• Tread Lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow.
  • Requiescat, st. 1 (1881)

• Lo! with a little rod I did but touch the honey of romance — And must I lose a soul's inheritance?
  • Helas!, l. 12-14 (1881)

• Over the piano was printed a notice: Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.
  • Personal Impressions of America (Leadville) (1883)

• Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.
  • Personal Impressions of America (Leadville) (1883)

• And down the long and silent street, The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet, Crept like a frightened girl.
  • The Harlot's House, st. 12 (1885)

• Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood.
  • Letter to James McNeill Whistler (23 February 1885)

• A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
  • The Portrait of Mr. W. H. (1889)

• The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang Tsǔ spent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all things.
  • Review of Herbert Giles translation of the works of Zhuangzi (Chuang Tsu) in The Speaker (8 February 1890)

• Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
  • "The Relation of Dress to Art," The Pall Mall Gazette (February 28, 1885)
  • reprinted in Aristotle at Afternoon Tea:The Rare Oscar Wilde (1991)

• A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
  • "The Children of the Poets," The Pall Mall Gazette (October 14, 1886)

• 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.
  • "A New Calendar," The Pall Mall Gazette (February 17, 1887)

• A simile committing suicide is always a depressing spectacle.
  • "The Poets' Corner III," The Pall Mall Gazette (May 30, 1887)

• And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view, it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
  • Literary and Other Notes I, Woman's World (November 1887)

• We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.
  • The Canterville Ghost (1887)

• Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance. She is a veil, rather than a mirror.
  • Intentions (1891)

• All art is immoral.
  • Intentions (1891)

• He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one's eyes, and does not look at him.
  • "The Birthday of the Infanta", The House of Pomegranates (1892)

• le mystère de l'amour est plus grand que le mystère de la mort.
• The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.
  • Salomé (1893)

• On George Bernard Shaw An excellent man: he has no enemies, and none of his friends like him.
  • Quoted by George Bernard Shaw in a letter to Ellen Terry, 25 September 1896

• I summed up all systems in a phrase, and all existence in an epigram.
  • Written in a letter from Reading Prison to Lord Alfred Douglas in early 1897.

• People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately.
  • Letter from Paris, (May 1900)

• It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
  • The Model Millionaire, 1912.

• Tell me, when you are alone with him [ Max Beerbohm ] Sphinx, does he take off his face and reveal his mask?
  • In a letter to Ada Leverson [Sphinx] recorded in her book Letters To The Sphinx From Oscar Wilde and Reminiscences of the Author (1930)

The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)

• "She said that she would dance with me if I brought her red roses," cried the young Student; "but in all my garden there is no red rose."
  • "The Nightingale and the Rose"

• Be happy, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart's-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty.
  • "The Nightingale and the Rose"

• Why, what a wonderful piece of luck! Here is a red rose! I have never seen any rose like it in all my life. It is so beautiful that I am sure it has a long Latin name.
  • "The Nightingale and the Rose"

• Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.
  • "The Remarkable Rocket"

The Decay of Lying (1889)

• Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

• It is always the unreadable that occurs.

• His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning.
  • A reference to George Meredith's style.

• No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

• Art persists, it timelessly continues.

The Critic as Artist (1891)

• Meredith is a prose Browning, and so is Browning. He used poetry as a medium for writing in prose.
  • Pt. I

• Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.
  • Pt. I

• There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other---by language, which is the parent, and not the child, of thought.
  • Pt. I

• Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes his biography.
  • Pt. I / Gilbert

• Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.
  • Pt. I

• Oh! journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read.
  • Pt. I

• I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood.
  • Pt. I

• The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.
  • Pt. I

• It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.
  • Pt. II

• As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
  • Pt. II

• There is no sin except stupidity.
  • Pt. II

• 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.
  • Pt. II

Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

• Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They're the only things we can pay.
  • Lord Darlington, Act I

• I can resist everything except temptation.
  • Lord Darlington, Act I

• Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.
  • Lord Darlington, Act I
  • Often quoted as: Life is far too important to be taken seriously.

• I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.
  • Mr. Dumby, Act II

• My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.
  • Cecil Graham, Act II

• Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
  • Lord Darlington, Act II

• My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people's.
  • Cecil Graham, Act III

• We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
  • Lord Darlington, Act III

• In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
  • Mr. Dumby, Act III

• What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
  • Lord Darlington, Act III

• Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
  • Mr. Dumby, Act III

• I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not.
  • Mrs. Erlynne, Act IV

• What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.
  • Lady Windermere, Act IV

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