Oscar Wilde

When a man does exactly what a woman expects him to do she doesn't think much of him. One should always do what a woman doesn't expect, just as one should say what she doesn't understand.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight.

The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action.

Love is a misunderstanding between two fools.

I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.

The weather still continues charming.

We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.

If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat.

But what world says that [I'm wicked]? It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent terms.

She knew nothing but she had everything he had lost.

The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought and sold and bartered away.

The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life.

When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.

Ah! The strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analyzed, women...merely adored.

I love to talk about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about.

For life is terribly deficient in form. Its catastrophes happen in the wrong way and to the wrong people. There is a grotesque horror about its comedies, and its tragedies seem to culminate in farce.

For a year after that was done to me I wept every day at the same hour and for the same space of time. That is not such a tragic thing as possibly it sounds to you. To those who are in prison tears are a part of every day's experience. A day in prison on which one does not weep is a day on which one's heart is hard, not a day on which one's heart is happy.

It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world

He is some brainless, beautiful creature, who should always be here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in the summer when we want something to chill our intelligence.

The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial.

Pleasures may turn a heart to stone, riches may make it callous, but sorrows cannot break it. Hearts live by being wounded.

A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous, treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in pain. The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and the tyranny of an old and loveless man. Yes, it was an interesting background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect as it were. Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.

I must say... that I ruined myself: and that nobody, great or small, can be ruined except by his own hand.

He hadn't a single redeeming vice.

One's only real life is the life one never leads.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, and creeds follow one another like the withered leaves of Autumn; but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons and a possession for all eternity.

Life would be dull without them.

Don't use big words. They mean so little.