Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854-1900)
People fashion their God after their own understanding. They make their God first and worship him afterwards.
There is only one thing in the world that is worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
I never put off till tomorrow what I can do the day after.
In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.
One should always be in love; that is the reason one should never marry.
A man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing.
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
All art is quite useless.
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
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.
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
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.
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
I am not young enough to know everything.
Science is the record of dead religions.
Only the shallow know themselves.