Oscar Wilde quotes

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter II

Nowadays people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter IV

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

— Spoken by a character · Chapter II

Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter I

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter XIX

"To define is to limit."

— Spoken by a character · Chapter XVII

every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

— Basil Hallward · Chapter I

I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter IX

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

— Spoken by a character · Chapter IV

In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing.

— Gwendolen · III. Drawing-Room at the Manor House, Woolton

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

— Algernon · III. Drawing-Room at the Manor House, Woolton

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

— Gwendolen · III. Drawing-Room at the Manor House, Woolton

To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

— Lady Bracknell · III. Drawing-Room at the Manor House, Woolton

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.

— Miss Prism · III. Drawing-Room at the Manor House, Woolton

If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.

— Algernon · III. Drawing-Room at the Manor House, Woolton

I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.

— Algernon · III. Drawing-Room at the Manor House, Woolton

I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays.

— Jack · III. Drawing-Room at the Manor House, Woolton

Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.

— Lady Bracknell · III. Drawing-Room at the Manor House, Woolton

Oh! it is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn’t. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read.

— Algernon · III. Drawing-Room at the Manor House, Woolton