“To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”
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Famous Oscar Wilde Quotes
“I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.”
Source: Oscar Wilde's Wit and Wisdom: A Book of Quotations
Source: The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde
“A poet can survive everything but a misprint.”
Source: Reviews
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest
“No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.”
Source: Essays and Lectures: Top Essays
“As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.”
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)
“Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.”
Source: The Wit and Wisdom of Oscar Wilde
“The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
“Only the shallow know themselves.”
Source: The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde
“Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.”
“In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.”
“One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.”
Source: The Best of Oscar Wilde: Selected Plays and Writings
“This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.”
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
“If one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk.”
Source: The Best of Oscar Wilde: Selected Plays and Writings
“Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.”
Source: Oscar Wilde's Wit and Wisdom: A Book of Quotations
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (more than 150 Works)
“There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.”
Source: The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray - and more
“Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.”
Source: The Happy Prince
“Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.”
Source: The Best of Oscar Wilde: Selected Plays and Writings
Source: The annotated Oscar Wilde
Source: The Picture Of Dorian Gray
Source: Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Plays, the Poems, the Stories and the Essays Including De Profundis
“There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.”
Source: An Ideal Husband: Second Edition, Revised
“How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.”
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan
“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.”
“Biography lends to death a new terror.”
Source: The Happy Prince
“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”
Source: The Happy Prince
“To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.”
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray - and more
Source: The Plays of Oscar Wilde
“Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.”
Source: Aphorisms
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest: Revised Edition
“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”
Source: The Prose of Oscar Wilde
“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.”
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray - and more
Source: Epigrams
“It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously”
Source: A Critic in Pall Mall: Being Extracts from Reviews and Miscellanies
“My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people's.”
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest: Revised Edition
Source: The Picture Of Dorian Gray
“I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones.”
Source: The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde
“If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.”
Source: Epigrams of Oscar Wilde