Oscar Wilde

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

It (cricket) requires one to assume such indecent postures

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

Conversation should touch everything, but should concentrate itself on nothing.

Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.

Nothing makes one so vain as being told one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all.

A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses.

It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution

One can give a really unbiased opinion only about things that do not interest one

I don't like compliments, and I don't see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman enormously when he says to her a whole heap of things that he doesn't mean

Comfort is the only thing our civilization can give us.

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.

All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.

He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realise.

My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people's

Biography lends to death a new terror.

By persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation.

Authority is quite degrading

Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

I knew that I had come face to face with some one whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself.

Bad artists always admire each others work.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors

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

The secret of life is in art.

I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.

The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly deceived