Quotations by Oscar Wilde

OSCAR WILDE (1854 –1900), AN IRISH ESSAYIST, NOVELIST, PLAYWRIGHT AND POET.

17 famous quotes by Oscar Wilde about art, life, death, politics and many more. “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.” ~ Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist

One can survive everything nowadays except death.

~ Oscar Wilde, "Oscariana" (1907)

“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.”

~ Oscar Wilde, Letter from Paris (May 1900)

“It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.”

~ Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Mr. W. H. (1889)

“The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition.”

~ Oscar Wilde, Intentions (1891)

“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.”

~ Oscar Wilde, 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.”

~ Oscar Wilde, "The Birthday of the Infanta", The House of Pomegranates (1892)

‘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.”

~ Oscar Wilde,"A New Calendar," The Pall Mall Gazette (February 17, 1887)

“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”

~ Oscar Wilde, The Epigrams of Oscar Wilde, edited by Alvin Redman (1954)

“Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime.”

~ Oscar Wilde, The Epigrams of Oscar Wilde, edited by Alvin Redman (1954)

“To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist – the problem is so entirely the same in both cases. To know exactly how much oil one must put with one's vinegar.”

~ Oscar Wilde, Vera; or, The Nihilists (1880)

“To drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?
Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll
Scrawled over on some boyish holiday
With idle songs for pipe and virelay,
Which do but mar the secret of the whole.”

~ Oscar Wilde, "Hélas" (1881)

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

~ Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying (1889)

“The final revelation is that Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.”

~ Oscar Wilde,The Decay of Lying (1889)

“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.”

~ Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891)

“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.”

~ Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891)

“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.”

~ Oscar Wilde,The Critic as Artist (1891)

“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.”

~ Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost (1887)

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