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Quotations for Every Mood





Quotations of selected author

Oscar Wilde

1854 - 1900. Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and short story writer, author of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" and "An Ideal Husband".

1. "Work is the curse of the drinking classes."

categories: Health and Alcohol -:- Work and Laziness

2. "Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will forgive us everything, even our intellects."

categories: Intellect, Judgement -:- Woman and Man

3. "Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly."

source: "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

categories: Woman and Man

4. "When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs."

source: "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

categories: Marriage

5. "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."

categories: Woman and Man

6. "We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken."

source: "De Profundis"

categories: Sorrow and Nostalgia

7. "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

source: "Lady Windermere's Fan"

categories: Dreams and Desires

8. "To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance."

categories: Egoism -:- Love

9. "To define is to limit."

categories: Various

10. "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

source: "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

categories: Success and Fame

11. "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."

source: "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

categories: Art and Culture -:- Manners and Ethics

12. "There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up."

categories: Egoism

13. "The one duty we owe to history is to re-write it."

categories: History and Nations

14. "The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death."

categories: Life and Death -:- Love

15. "The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him."

categories: Life and Death

16. "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."

categories: Happiness

17. "Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."

categories: Egoism

18. "Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality."

source: "Lady Windermere's Fan"

categories: Manners and Ethics

19. "Punctuality is the thief of time."

categories: Time and Passing

20. "One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar."

categories: Life and Death -:- Various

21. "Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."

source: "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

categories: Richness and Money -:- Various

22. "No man is rich enough to buy back his own past."

source: "An Ideal Husband"

categories: Richness and Money -:- Time and Passing

23. "No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist."

categories: Art and Culture

24. "Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event."

categories: Time and Passing

25. "Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed."

source: "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

categories: Marriage -:- Woman and Man

26. "Life is far too important to be taken seriously."

source: "Lady Windermere's Fan"

categories: Life and Death

27. "Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life."

source: "The Decay of Lying"

categories: Art and Culture -:- Life and Death

28. "Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one."

categories: Friendship and Hostility -:- Wit and Humor

29. "Journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read."

categories: Art and Culture -:- Various

30. "It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."

categories: Manners and Ethics

31. "In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer."

categories: Education -:- Question and Problem

32. "Illusion is the first of all pleasures."

categories: Joy and Sadness

33. "Illusion is the first of all pleasures."

categories: Reality and Imagination

34. "If we men married the women we deserved, we should have a very bad time of it."

source: "An Ideal Husband"

categories: Marriage

35. "I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world."

categories: Human -:- Manners and Ethics

36. "I have said to you to speak the truth is a painful thing. To be forced to tell lies is much worse."

source: "De Profundis"

categories: Truth and Falsity

37. "I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones."

source: "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

categories: Friendship and Hostility

38. "Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do."

categories: Work and Laziness

39. "Genius lasts longer than beauty."

categories: Beauty and Ugliness -:- Talent and Genius

40. "Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes."

source: "Lady Windermere's Fan"

categories: Defeates and Mistakes

41. "Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes his biography."

categories: Loyalty and Betrayal -:- Talent and Genius

42. "Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."

categories: Education

43. "Conscience and cowardice are really the same things. Conscience is the trade name of the firm, that is all."

categories: Bravery and Fear -:- Sin and Conscience

44. "Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them."

categories: Family and Loneliness -:- Youth and Age

45. "Bigamy is having a wife too many, monogamy is the same."

categories: Marriage

46. "Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship."

source: "Lady Windermere's Fan"

categories: Friendship and Hostility -:- Woman and Man

47. "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."

categories: Human -:- Various

48. "Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination."

categories: Reality and Imagination

49. "Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it."

categories: History and Nations

50. "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."

categories: Forgiveness

51. "A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on."

categories: Woman and Man -:- Manners and Ethics

52. "A poet can survive everything but a misprint."

categories: Art and Culture

53. "A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her."

categories: Woman and Man -:- Love -:- Happiness


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