Of course. Oscar Wilde was a master of the epigram and his wit remains as sharp today as it was in the Victorian era. Here are 100 of his most famous and insightful sayings, categorized for easier reading.
On Life, Experience, and Ambition
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. I can resist everything except temptation. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not. There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. 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. What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. I am not young enough to know everything. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. A good friend will always stab you in the front. The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast. I have the simplest of tastes. I am always satisfied with the best. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly—that is what each of us is here for. It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it. I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
On Art, Beauty, and Criticism
All art is quite useless. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic. A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist. Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known. The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. A flower blossoms for its own joy. The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. The one charm of the past is that it is the past. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods. The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius. It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection.
On Love, Men, Women, and Marriage
Men always want to be a woman's first love—women like to be a man's last romance. The very essence of romance is uncertainty. Women are made to be loved, not understood. A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction. All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his. One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry. The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life. Who, being loved, is poor? Never love anyone who treats you like you're ordinary. A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her. The heart was made to be broken. 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? Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood. The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one's clean linen in public. Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
On Truth, Lies, and Sincerity
The truth is rarely pure and never simple. I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying. Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. The telling of beautiful untrue things is the proper aim of Art. Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you. A truth ceases to be a truth when more than one person believes in it. Illusion is the first of all pleasures. It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
On Society, Morality, and Conversation
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals. Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability. Public opinion exists only where there are no ideas. To be popular one must be a mediocrity. Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it. Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike. I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about. The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable. Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing. The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means. The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything. Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but the highest form of intelligence. Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are. Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future. It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.
Final Aphorisms and Personal Reflections
I have nothing to declare except my genius. I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible. I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works. Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. The only difference between the caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell. I like men who have a future and women who have a past. 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. The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death. 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. Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. The world is divided into two classes, those who believe the incredible, and those who do the improbable. I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But it is better to be good than to be ugly. Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.
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