1856-1900, British Author, Wit
The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him.
Oscar Wilde – [Life and Living]
The mere mechanical technique of acting can be taught, but the spirit that is to give life to lifeless forms must be born in a man. No dramatic college can teach its pupils to think or to feel. It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.
Oscar Wilde – [Acting and Actors]
The mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.
Oscar Wilde – [Learning]
The modern sympathy with invalids is morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others.
Oscar Wilde – [Illness]
The more one analyses people, the more all reasons for analysis disappear. Sooner or later one comes to that dreadful universal thing called human nature.
Oscar Wilde – [Psychoanalysis]
The old believe everything; the middle aged suspect everything, and the young know everything.
Oscar Wilde – [Belief]
The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.
Oscar Wilde – [Respectability]
The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action.
Oscar Wilde – [Illusion]
The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.
Oscar Wilde – [Caprice]
The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Oscar Wilde – [Sin]
The only thing that ever consoles man for the stupid things he does is the praise he always gives himself for doing them.
Oscar Wilde – [Stupidity]
The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result.
Oscar Wilde – [Human Nature]
The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
Oscar Wilde – [Advice]
The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.
Oscar Wilde – [Future]
The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.
Oscar Wilde – [Plays]
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
Oscar Wilde – [Genius]
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde – [Truth]
The salesman knows nothing of what he is selling save that he is charging a great deal too much for it.
Oscar Wilde – [Sales]
The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.
Oscar Wilde – [Purity]
The sign of a Philistine age is the cry of immorality against art.
Oscar Wilde – [Obscenity]
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