Oscar Wilde

The growing influence of women is the one reassuring thing in our political life.

What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.

I have never admitted that I am more than twenty-nine, or thirty at the most. Twenty-nine when there are pink shades, thirty when there are not.

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. [Answering the question, what is a cynic?]

In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

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

Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.

My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people's.

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

My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.

I couldn't help it. I can resist everything except temptation.

Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They're the only things we can pay.

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

The fact is, that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesmanlike habits, supplies their demands

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

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

The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes.

There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannises over the body. There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The …

There are as many perfections as there are imperfect men. And while to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free, to the claims of conformity no man may yield and remain free at all.

People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over …

In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever and ever.