Quotes by Oscar Wilde

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Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
I have nothing to declare but my genius.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
I never put off till tomorrow what I can do the day after.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.
I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.
One should always be in love; that is the reason one should never marry.
Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
A man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know everything.
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning to a friendship, and it is far the best ending to one.
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.
People fashion their God after their own understanding. They make their God first and worship him afterwards.
The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly, that is what each of us is here for.
There is only one thing in the world that is worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.
People say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.
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